business plan challenges

Small Business Trends

Top 15 small business challenges and how to overcome them.

Table of Contents

Top Small Business Challenges

1. cash flow, 2. supply chain disruption, 3. customer acquisition, 4. undiversified customer base, 5. balancing quality and business growth, 6. company culture, 7. customer satisfaction, 8. economic trends, 9. healthcare, 10. time management, 11. government regulation, 13. losing passion, 14. market competition, 15. recruiting employees.

How Do You Overcome Challenges Facing a Small Business Owner?

Understanding the target market:, being informed about current market trends:, developing an effective business strategy:, having sufficient start-up funds:, flexibility and adaptability:, seek mentorship:, why do so many small businesses fail, inadequate planning or flawed business model:, financial difficulties:, challenges in marketing and advertising:, intense competition:, operational mistakes:, external factors:, what is the biggest challenge for small business owners.

The 38 Biggest Business Challenges Growing Companies Face

Note: Some of the recommended resources (tools, vendors, books) may include affiliate links. I only promote solutions I use myself or businesses I support personally.

Growing a business is complicated. According to SBE Council , 89% of all businesses employ fewer than 20 employees. And scaling a company further is contingent on solving a number of business challenges — most of those being common across all organizations out there.

Businesses in their first year or two, under 10 to 20 employees, and making less than $500,000 in revenue are still validating their business model. Once a certain sense of stability is met, several repetitive challenges keep haunting organizations, over and over again.

After 16 years of running businesses and scaling 3 companies from zero to seven figures, I’ve compiled this comprehensive list of the most impactful business challenges that companies have to deal with. This consolidated report represents 500+ companies I’ve consulted and managed across my businesses. Resembling the feast or famine cycle freelancers are notorious for, the balancing act requires juggling with multiple challenges at a time, often across different categories.

This also summarized my launch and growth framework available in my new book “ MBA Disrupted ” (2x best-seller). 📗

For easier navigation, here’s a table of contents you can refer to for every section in this long-form guide:

1.1. Designing Systems and Processes

1.2. lack of direction/vision, 1.3. coping with market competition, 1.4. keeping up with market transformations, 1.5. reducing dependencies on the founding team, 1.6. balancing quality and growth, 1.7. leveraging consultants and business advisors, 2.1. building effective marketing strategies, 2.2. properly allocating marketing resources, 2.3. measuring marketing initiatives, 2.4. building a corporate brand, 2.5. relying on marketing for lead generation, 3.1. hiring new employees, 3.2. founding new departments, 3.3. retaining top talent, 3.4. embracing diversity at work, 3.5. nurturing a thriving company culture, 4.1. time management, 4.2. working on the business, 4.3. communication, 4.4. motivating employees, 4.5. strategic leadership, 4.6. hybrid work, 4.7. limited focus mode, 5.1. landing new business, 5.2. retaining customers (lifetime value), 5.3. maximizing word of mouth, 5.4. identifying new sales channels, 5.5. handling pricing negotiations, 5.6. building strategic partnerships & networking, 6.1. solving productivity problems, 6.2. automating business processes, 6.3. deploying technology for innovation, 6.4. training staff at large, 6.5. keeping up to speed with innovations, 7.1. tax management, 7.2. gdpr/ccpa, 7.3. employment overhead.

• What's Next?

The list is broken down into 7 core categories, each of them describing a painful challenge growing organizations struggle with throughout their growth journey:

• Business Strategy
• Recruitment

I recently made a video guide encompassing the core 38 areas in this hour-long recording for my YouTube channel (subscribe for regular B2B video guides):

Here’s what the core business struggles look like today.

1. Business Strategy

Equally valid for small enterprises and large corporations, staying ahead of the game is fine art for any organization out there.

If you risk too much, you’ll lose money. If you remain comfortable in your position, competition will steal your most valued customers. Defining an effective business strategy that can scale and evolve with time is paramount for a profitable venture eager to stay ahead.

Business process management , as defined in Wikipedia, is the discipline responsible for applying techniques and methods to discover, model, analyze, measure, improve, optimize, and automate business processes.

Aside from professional consultancies , BPM is a leading challenge across growing organizations. Processes evolve over time as the business penetrates new markets and hires employees.

New recruits affect the company’s hierarchy, often leading to new tiers of management, operational procedures, and management workflows.

While the requirement for in-depth MBA understanding is evident, mainstream education is not the only way, as it may be confusing and expensive for some people, Luckily, people like Josh Kaufman provide concise books like The Personal MBA where they touch on systems and processes in entrepreneurship and traditional business.

An ineffective set of processes will impact in-house and external communication, the company’s morale, the efficiency of hiring new people at scale, and the profitability across the onboarding of new roles.

Organizations clearly threaten companies wandering around without a long-term vision with a clear agenda in place.

Kodak passed on the opportunity to release the first digital camera . They felt secure in their photography world while neglecting the drawbacks of traditional cameras in the era of evolving digital innovations.

Toys R Us faded away for good while millennials and generation Z embraced video games and online shopping. Smaller stores sold the same products at a discounted price, in neighborhoods all around the world.

Even billion-dollar enterprises can easily drop out of a competitive landscape unless they keep innovating, attracting new markets, and staying on top of the latest innovations.

Executives and senior managers can leverage the power of SWOT analysis frameworks and identify the missing links in their leadership strategy. This could be instrumental as an exercise for team leaders and even individual employees across the organization as a “ reality check ” instrument for self-assessment.

An old branding rule states that the best businesses are:

• The first in a category
• Or the best in a category

Younger startups fail to define their unique competitive advantage among established giants. Industry leaders, on the other end, miss stealth startups rapidly aiming at their target market, revealing their weaknesses, and coming up with a counter-offer.

A smart workaround is targeting foreign markets for higher profit margins. Acquiring the majority of a market in a less competitive area can generate enough buzz to bootstrap the business in “red ocean” territories harder to penetrate at first.

One of my favourite reading materials regarding market competition is Alex Hormozi’s $100M Leads: How to Get Strangers to Want to Buy Your Stuff . The book is full of actionable frameworks and hook-and-retain systems that help you land more customers. I have two physical copies of the book in the DevriX office.

Differentiating while niching down is a common strategy for starting businesses that want to overcome the challenges of a broad pool of successful vendors in the space.

Adapting to market transformations and technological innovations isn’t easy at scale. We see this firsthand with AI penetration since 2023.

US companies with hundreds of employees abandoned EU markets after the introduction of GDPR in May 2018. Old-school businesses who couldn’t train their staff basic computer operator skills struggle to operate in a competitive digital environment. The same legal framework is now penetrating the US, causing friction and problems for smaller businesses.

Advertising in newspapers and social media is a different game. Just like adapting a traditional “car salesman” process to a modern business development workflow given a transformed buyer’s journey.

Being “ up to speed ” with the latest business, digital, economic and political trends isn’t easy. We may be following the industry journals, but groundbreaking innovations are deployed quietly, emerging globally once they get enough traction for scale.

A common problem for startups and smaller businesses where founders are heavily involved in day-to-day operations.

Smart founders are aware of the benefits of working “ on ” the business instead of “ in ” the business. But implementing this in practice is complicated .

If founders want the business to be more independent of them, they must create a business parable for their start-ups that won’t trap them when they want to sell it .

Inefficient execution leads to blockers and broken workflows, swamping the founding team , delaying deliverables, capping growth, and reducing the level of institutional knowledge in the team.

Designing a recruitment and growth strategy around building a leadership team of intrapreneurs is a lesser-known solution to this common business challenge.

Growing startups and SMEs often report reduced quality while scaling, especially the fast-growth ones.

During the first year or two, a small handful of people are in charge of all operations. Skilled professionals start a business, deliver outstanding quality, work day and night on execution, and build a client base.

To become a high-performing SME , founders develop clarity, generate energy, raise necessity, increase productivity, develop influence, and demonstrate courage.

Throughout the growth period, new roles are created — support, business development, marketing, management. As recruitment and onboarding processes are still in their infancy, this creates a separation between the level of quality across different team members.

Moreover, hiring A-players isn’t sustainable at scale. A large corporation can only survive with a complex set of repetitive workflows, easy to follow by anyone who jumps on board. Relying on creativity, self-management, and proactivity is risky and nearly impossible for multinational enterprises.

Athletes work with coaches, musicians rely on producers to advise on trends, enterprises work under boards.

The equivalent of scaling a business effectively for small and medium-sized enterprises are consultants and advisors .

Finding a business mentor is one of the most productive tips that Suhail, founder of a 300+ person Mixpanel , suggests:

5/ Find a great mentor: Pick someone you want to impress. Find someone who will lift you up when you're down & take you down a notch when you're over confident. Ideally, they've been a CEO/founder before so they can empathize. Remember though: they offer guidance, not a script. — Suhail (@Suhail) May 21, 2018

Efficiency at scale is paramount. Mistakes cost a fortune, time is of the essence, allocating time often involves multiple divisions. Even with a small army in your control, assigning the right strategic activities is far easier when you work with a digital or business consultant .

2. Marketing

Marketing is a blended term encompassing a broad set of professional activities. It’s not a necessity for tiny teams.

Growing further? It’s absolutely paramount .

Let’s look into the main marketing challenges that businesses face while growing.

What is the #1 problem with generic terms like “Marketing”, “Negotiations”, “Management”?

Everyone assumes they get the gist out of them.

You don’t have to be certified or spend 4 years in a college to manage a couple of people. But managing two people in an SMB is completely different than managing a team of top-tier engineers in Google, for example.

Organizations often rely on rumors and common trends online, including:

• Blogs are mandatory for success
• An omni-channel approach from the start is required
• You should spend a lot of time on social media
• Video will rule
• Marketing transforms to AI

The lack of any strategy in place, setting up adequate key performance indicators, and producing actionable business results are major bottlenecks for many businesses, especially traditional ones.

To produce such results, one must learn to create simple and fast marketing strategies . They might not be perfect, but a working viable strategy is better than nothing.

Making the first step to refining your marketing strategy is important. Don’t miss out.

Investing in marketing isn’t intuitive at first. There are plenty of options for launching marketing initiatives:

• Hiring a marketing co-founder
• Onboarding a director of marketing
• Starting with an assistant or two
• Working with freelancers
• Signing with an agency

Businesses in different stages can apply marketing in various forms. Without the right strategy in place, marketing will be chaotic, generating minimum (if any) ROI, and more expensive than useful.

And exploring the alternatives between outsourcing or building marketing teams is the best next step.

Setting up the right KPIs (key performance indicators) is an art .

The most common response I get while chatting with clients regarding KPIs is “ revenue “.

Of course, revenue growth is the ultimate goal for almost any business. But, it is achievable through multiple channels. Each represents a chain of techniques and events leading to a sale or a conversion.

The lack of direction — and the vagueness of a strategy — won’t lead to a tight process, a measurable one that gets the job done.

This is why one important content marketing lesson is that professional marketers must outline a s uccessful content strategy that is broken down into multiple phases, over time, with certain indicators in place. Traffic, conversion rates, sign-ups, email open rates, brand searches — and hundreds of other factors contributing to generating a purchase.

A powerful brand can go a very, very long way.

Most reputable and well-known brands in the world can afford to:

• Receive tons of PR attention
• Get thousands of job applications at no cost
• Present at the best events out there
• Land customers with little friction
• Receive free backlinks (being quoted and pointed as an example all the time)
• Rank high in Google as a result
• Gather a loyal, enormous group of followers online

Brand building is a complex, long-term initiative, and measuring results isn’t easy. But the effects of a powerful brand are indisputable. This is one of the levers of my B2B agency, DevriX, scaling a handful of businesses past 100M monthly views and helping SMEs grow continuously.

Employer branding is an extremely powerful weapon for recruitment, especially at rapidly growing organizations.

The return on investment in brand building for large corporations is the leading reason hundreds of millions are poured into street billboards and TV ads. Believe it or not, it pays off with time.

As discussed a bit earlier, defining optimal strategies and measuring KPIs is complex. As a result, businesses know that marketing is essential — but they remain unsure of its efficiency.

They can’t predictably hire and grow revenue thanks to marketing initiatives.

They can’t retain or generate new leads .

They can’t scale budgets sustainably due to fluctuating results.

And this impacts their sales and business development processes as a result. This stagnation reflects on revenue growth, salary increments, and employees’ mental health at the workplace .

Successful businesses have the right processes in place, measure KPIs related to actual purchases, and can pump up additional resources to predictably increase their revenue.

3. Recruitment

Starting businesses care a lot more and more frequently about landing new customers. Once they build a small team and form a couple of recurring revenue streams, scaling the company becomes a bigger challenge.

And what are the main recruitment hassles businesses complain about?

You’ve closed a strategic partnership or closed a massive deal — but you lack the manpower to execute. How quickly can you scale the team?

Unless your brand speaks for itself or your budgets are through the roof, competing with everyone on the market for top talent is a shark pool.

Top talent can start anywhere. They get the perks, the salary package, probably some flexible time off or remote working opportunities , along with a nice title and some growth opportunities. Top national brands and bleeding-edge startups both compete for them, with tens of thousands of open jobs online.

Hiring at scale is even more challenging. The overhead is multiplied if you need to make compromises in a really competitive market.

Following the practical guide to hiring employees will overcome some of the leading obstacles for you.

When I discuss business process outsourcing with prospects or potential partners, hiring in-house always comes up. And my response to this is:

Are you ready to build and nurture an entire new department?

This is equally valid for production, development, marketing, and logistics.

With marketing, getting the job done is contingent on strategy and leadership, combined with a team of top performers across different disciplines (copywriting, social media, email marketing, etc.)

In web development, building a project, unless they are great insta pages , requires front-end and back-end developers, quality assurance experts, tech-savvy project managers, systems engineers, and creative artists.

Starting a new department is a challenging undertaking that is to be evaluated carefully and incorporated with regular and reliable feedback plans .

This is especially important if you’re bootstrapped and building a new department with a limited budget until generating positive ROI .

Arranging an interview with top talent isn’t easy. Getting them to accept an offer is a form of luck.

Retaining them? Even the largest brands struggle to retain talent . In competitive disciplines like software engineering,

Facebook’s average retention period is 2.5 years while Google’s is 3.2 years. Complying with the most common recruitment challenges in IT will mitigate a portion of the churn rate.

With all the perks and top-tier salaries, exciting projects, and businesses worth hundreds of billions, keeping talent around is still a leading risk across business organizations.

Diversity has been a painful topic for ages. It has gained a lot more attention during the past decade, with some groundbreaking revelations for pay cuts, sexual harassment, unlawful firing, gender or racial discrimination (to name a few).

Companies like Uber have sunk billions in valuation due to poor management and reputation on the grounds of diversity.

Making sure that the culture is thriving is one of the leading problems. And enriching the workspace without placing artificial constraints is a natural continuation.

Building a great culture is a compound process that covers every step of the way:

• Strategy and core leadership
• Definition of the culture’s goals
• Careful and thorough recruitment
• Appropriate and balanced onboarding workflow
• Integration within existing processes and teams
• Ongoing nurturing and mentorship
• Giving freedom and opportunities
• Personal and professional development across talent

At DevriX, we’ve been mastering the culture development process since day 1. Company culture is the leading factor for building a successful remote team .

While a time-consuming endeavor, neglecting talent will decrease retention rates and the overall efficiency within the organization .

4. Management

Management takes multiple forms in a business organization. It entails the control and coordination of processes, people, time, resources, vendors, budgets, and a broader area of activities across the company.

Along with business strategy in the first chapter, management touches every point of the organization. This section enumerates some of the  key managerial problems  businesses face .

Effectively allocating time to the right initiatives is a craft.

And this is a valid problem for virtually every industry. Regardless of whether you run a cab company, a software agency, an event management consultancy, or a law firm.

Productive time management maximizes the potential of every single employee. Within a team, the power law kicks in: two slow parties will exponentially drag an assignment further and incur communication overhead.

This entails the time of the founders, senior management, supervisors, and every end unit of the business.

This is closely related to the dependency of the founding team.

Business owners and the C-Suite should quickly transition from operations to strategic leadership as the team grows.

At first, owners must run the day-to-day of the business .

They set the tone and create the initial processes. Bring the actual value to the business by delivering results. Building the product or delivering the service.

It’s only natural — and this is what freelancers and consultants do for the better part of their careers.

But scaling a company and hiring people? Delegation and freeing up time on strategy and growth are paramount. This is where building partnerships and outsourcing come in handy. A business cannot scale if the founders work in the business instead of determining and setting the direction for the entire organization.

A communication study reported by the Society for HR Management includes 400 companies with 100,000 employees each. Inadequate communication incurs an average of $62.4M in loss caused by overhead, misaligned work, incorrect deliverables, and more.

Communication problems easily make it to the top 10 critical business challenges across all organizations.

Many decision-makers seem to be incapable of connecting with their team and being on the same page.

And there are so many contributing factors: lack of enough experience, vague requirements, fear of disappointing management (or losing one’s job), ego, poor processes.

Establishing a streamlined communication protocol and straightforward processes is what management consulting and operational management are all about.

A critical challenge for both startups and large corporations.

An inefficient, demotivated employee in a startup may be worth 20% of the firm’s manpower. This may very well cause the startup to go bankrupt. Luckily, small teams work closely together every day, and noticing the trend is easier than overseeing tens of thousands of employees.

The challenge for large corporations is the law of power . If multiple departments get disconnected from the general purpose of the business, this may result in hundreds of employees investing the bare minimum to stay employed. And the combined expenses for the corporation are staggering — let alone the missed opportunities from closing new business.

Whenever capital isn’t there, creative recruitment and management techniques are available for startups and smaller enterprises.

The role of strategic leadership is defining the right roadmap for the business (or a department), breaking it down into actionable items, delegating the goals to the responsible parties, uniting the team together, motivating each member , and moving the needle both short-term and in the long run.

Strategic leadership touches on other important aspects of management. It covers the business needs through ideation and execution, envisioning trends and seeking opportunities.

It also respects each team member, recognizing valuable skills and developing new opportunities for growth.

Effective leadership improves company morale and progressively moves the business forward.

The “new normal” since the beginning of 2020 changed a lot of paradigms, including the global shift to remote work , working across different time zones, and hiring internationally (to name a few). It looks different several years later with most people back at the office – but still a leading remote or hybrid-first environment and multinational organizations at scale.

While global managers grew into their new role of managing remote talent, the new transition to hybrid work poses its own challenges.

Introducing new tooling to facilitate asynchronous communication across teams enabled better time allocation in-between Zoom calls and Slack/Teams huddles. And establishing a better workflow that strengthens on-site meetings with inclusivity toward remote employees is the next step.

According to different studies, managers spend nearly 20 hours a week in meetings. Blocking time for focus work is challenging.

How to increase productivity while maintaining collaboration across teams?

One way to combat meetings fatigue is by mastering multitasking . Understanding how and when to focus matters – but being a master in multitasking carries its own weight.

Additionally, fighting procrastination will help you and your teams build resilience on the job.

Sales are a necessity to fuel the corporate engine.

A successful sales strategy unlocks growth opportunities across all business departments — hiring new team members, investing in brand building, training for current employees, raises and bonuses, and a safety net if something goes off.

Here are the most pressing sales challenges for most businesses out there.

Every business struggles with closing new customers (small and large alike). Even enterprises have to compete for large government contracts.

Startups haven’t proven themselves yet , lack a fully trained sales team on-site, and need to compete with large, well-known organizations. Especially true if the founder has no sales expertise .

Enterprises are expensive . Their operational costs are high which affects their price point. Also, most enterprises can’t innovate fast enough, allowing competitors to chime in or startups to launch, acquiring some of their existing users.

Even when an established sales process is in place , the landscape of the market evolves at a fast pace. Consumers get access to new opportunities (or competitors). Some profitable channels get oversaturated. Retaining top salespeople is expensive and eats up the business margins.

Here’s the starter guide to generating sales designed for covering the basic techniques for introvert founders and CEOs.

Since sales and marketing get more expensive, retaining existing customers is the focus of SaaS businesses, service companies, support firms, and any other business able to continuously deliver to the same customer.

Customer retention can be disrupted with a drop in the quality, increase of prices, the inception of more lucrative competitors.

And many businesses simply haven’t found effective channels to keep customers happy (and willing to pay) continuously . Luckily, different techniques are available for continuously prolonging the lifetime value per customer.

Similarly to customer retention, unlocking new sales opportunities from satisfied customers is a common problem for businesses.

Companies traditionally don’t have an effective process for receiving introductions to other leads or invitations to special industry events.

This can be supplemented with case studies, video reviews, and testimonials increasing the credibility of a business.

According to Nielsen, 92% of consumers trust word of mouth more than any other form of advertising. Maximizing this channel is worth conceptualizing.

Most small and medium businesses leverage one or two sales channels. These are usually insufficient and risky.

On top of that, they may be expensive. Attending trade shows for closing a couple of leads requires a lot of preparation, travel, and accommodation, and building a team capable of closing.

Over time, new sales channels emerge . Are you actively seeking them?

The same goes for regularly experimenting with channels that didn’t work back in the day.

If cold calling wasn’t efficient a year ago, it may work better now. A new hire may be more competent in reaching out through LinkedIn. Your brand may have contributed to the better positioning of your business, contingent on having the right offer to pitch.

Even the most experienced salesmen often struggle with price haggling .

While you know what your product is worth, this doesn’t necessarily translate into your prospect’s mind.

With new competition on board and innovative ways to solve existing business problems, retaining the value of your solution isn’t easy. Lucrative potential partnerships may justify reducing the cost in some cases, but identifying the right partnership opportunities requires a good amount of experience and predicting the corresponding opportunities.

One of the easiest ways to bootstrap a new business or launch a brand new product is leveraging partnerships (and networking with the right vendors).

Partnerships are one of the four most important lead generation channels for both of my businesses. Starting a meaningful collaboration with an existing business that serves the same audience can be an incredible win-win for both parties: you reach your ideal audience and your partner can upsell or cross-sell their services.

Marketplaces are an intermediate medium that gets the job done. But a real partnership enables you to run joint webinars, leverage press together, and maximize ad spend effectively.

And when it comes to effective networking , here’s what you need to know.

6. Technology

Technology sits at the intersection of management and operations.

Businesses of all types and forms deploy software solutions for online positioning, marketing automation, customer relationship management, resource planning, application tracking, project management (to name a few).

Understanding how and when technology can increase the productivity of the business is a key skill.

Productivity loss is a combination of inefficient processes, poor tracking, communication overhead, incomplete onboarding.

All of these challenges can be solved with the right technology stack in place. Here’s how to do it.

• Processes can be optimized with business process management solutions , carefully refining your set of processes, delegating each step to a team member, and tracking progress over time.
• Tracking and project management may be handled with PM systems, a team messenger application, and time trackers whenever applicable.
• Onboarding may be handled through documentation or online courses, email training, demo applications, and virtual conferencing whenever external consultants are involved.
• Leverage tools for multitasking and asynchronous communication

Repetitively solving productivity problems will have an accumulative positive impact on business growth (and company morale).

Day-to-day operations can always be optimized. Reducing administrative friction is a “best practice” when creating a business plan for the company or a new product.

Back in the day, logistic companies weren’t leveraging GPS devices and tracking software optimizing their routes throughout the day. They used to fill out waybills on paper, using a finite set of receipt numbers, carrying over to accounting which spent days to merge these before the end of the month.

Accounting used to be handled on paper, by hand. Sales presentations are led over the phone or on-site due to the lack of video conferencing and presentations.

Eventually, new technical solutions emerged, solving day-to-day processes, reducing the error rate of manual mistakes, simplifying calculations, and designing predictions.

Even when tools are available, deploying them at work may turn out to be a complex set of processes.

Growing organizations use dozens (if not hundreds) of software tools responsible for different activities, aiming to maximize the use of incorporating technology to solve business problems . Effective applications talk to each other, pulling data from financial software tools, cross-checking with marketing applications, and generating reports in ERPs or CRMs.

Finding the right technical stack may be tricky. Evaluating the return on investment for restructuring certain portions of the technical landscape in favor of improving processes and saving time is an ongoing challenge for information officers and business leaders.

Aside from the technical logistics, teaching employees new software applications is an expensive investment.

While the younger generation is more comfortable switching between applications (thanks to the adoption of laptops, tablets, smartphones), that’s not the case for everyone, especially for the older generation.

This is why training may take weeks, months, or even over a year for complex ERPs or other business process applications delivering tens of thousands of features.

Considering the adoption of a software solution is always top of mind for business leaders looking for ways to optimize processes and reduce the hiring overhead for operations that could easily be automated (at least partially).

Due to the challenges of deploying new software, organizations often get too comfortable using outdated tools or applications.

This creates a false sense of “ efficiency “. A software application is in place and some of the work gets done. Oftentimes, this is not the most optimal way forward.

Moreover, identifying the right technical solutions to deploy is questionable. Organizations with limited tech-savvy leaders may miss out on great opportunities. Or get mislead by expensive PR and advertising campaigns started by less promising market alternatives.

One of the leading reasons we deploy WordPress solutions to enterprises is the bulletproof backward compatibility . Ensuring the longevity of your software solution will improve the adoption and decrease the documentation overhead for every new release.

Missing out on key opportunities may degrade the efficiency of the organization and impact the work quality as a result. Tech-driven businesses relying on the latest tech may deliver similar results at a fraction of the cost or time.

7. Compliance

The fastest way to tank a successful company at scale is a massive legal or financial violation.

Failing to report taxes accurately, especially internationally, or violating human laws can turn into an absolute nightmare for every organization.

Starting businesses are not as prone to regular audits. Doing business at a small scale is considered less risky, involves fewer employees, doesn’t include syndicates or lobbies.

Handing taxes becomes a burden early in – and complying with federal, state, national, and international tax regulations is a notable challenge.

Digital companies adhere to different tax codes depending on whether they deliver services or products, the origin of the deal, selling to individuals vs. companies, and their geographical location. That creates a number of edge cases that commerce software needs to support and keep up to date with as taxes change over time.

Privacy laws and regulations have contributed to legal overhead and digital popup blindness ever since the adoption of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2016, followed by the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in 2018.

While privacy policies have always been important, strictly limiting sensitive and personally identifiable information is on the rise. Following violations can cost 10 million euros (around $11M) or 2% of the global turnover of an organization. For context, Amazon was fined $877M in 2021and Facebook $275M.

Growing businesses depend on collaboration. Headcount is directly proportional to revenue growth and success – as scaling operations is nearly impossible without continuous hiring.

But employment laws aren’t easy, either. There are continued conflicts between applicants and organizations, involving labor laws and authorities. Between demand for public salary ranges and diversity conversations, parenting leave demands, increasing age for retirement, mandatory annual leave, and providing a healthy environment at work, HR managers and executives have to navigate a complex set of requirements.

This also facilitates an easier onboarding environment for freelancers, contractors, and agencies , further growing the entrepreneurial space out there.

What’s Next?

Over the next couple of months, I’ll be supplementing the list with additional business challenges companies face across other growth areas, including sales, management, technology, and finances.

And most topics will receive an in-depth overview of techniques and leading industry practices.

If you are interested in the evolution of the comprehensive business checklist covering the leading challenges haunting growing businesses, make sure you sign up for my free 8-week business training .

Over the course of 16 lessons, I’ll discuss the most pressing business challenges, structured in an easy-to-follow way for executives and managers operating in different industries.

This is suitable management training for aspiring leaders in your organization as well.

My name is Mario Peshev, a global SME Business Advisor running digital businesses for 20 the past years.

Born in Bulgaria, Europe, I gained diverse management experience through my training work across Europe, North America, and the Arab world. With 10,000+ hours in consulting and training for organizations like SAP, VMware, CERN, I’ve dedicated a huge amount of my time to helping hundreds of SMEs growing in different stages of the business lifecycle.

My martech agency DevriX grew past 50 people and ranks as a top 10 WordPress global agency and Growth Blueprint, my advisory firm, has served 400+ SME founders and executives with monthly ongoing strategy sessions.

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What is a Business Plan? Definition, Tips, and Templates

Updated: June 28, 2024

Published: August 04, 2020

Years ago, I had an idea to launch a line of region-specific board games. I knew there was a market for games that celebrated local culture and heritage. I was so excited about the concept and couldn't wait to get started.

But my idea never took off. Why? Because I didn‘t have a plan. I lacked direction, missed opportunities, and ultimately, the venture never got off the ground.

And that’s exactly why a business plan is important. It cements your vision, gives you clarity, and outlines your next step.

In this post, I‘ll explain what a business plan is, the reasons why you’d need one, identify different types of business plans, and what you should include in yours.

Table of Contents

What is a business plan?

What is a business plan used for.

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Purposes of a Business Plan

What does a business plan need to include, types of business plans.

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A business plan is a comprehensive document that outlines a company's goals, strategies, and financial projections. It provides a detailed description of the business, including its products or services, target market, competitive landscape, and marketing and sales strategies. The plan also includes a financial section that forecasts revenue, expenses, and cash flow, as well as a funding request if the business is seeking investment.

The business plan is an undeniably critical component to getting any company off the ground. It's key to securing financing, documenting your business model, outlining your financial projections, and turning that nugget of a business idea into a reality.

The purpose of a business plan is three-fold: It summarizes the organization’s strategy in order to execute it long term, secures financing from investors, and helps forecast future business demands.

Business Plan Template [ Download Now ]

Working on your business plan? Try using our Business Plan Template . Pre-filled with the sections a great business plan needs, the template will give aspiring entrepreneurs a feel for what a business plan is, what should be in it, and how it can be used to establish and grow a business from the ground up.

In an era where 48% of businesses survive half a decade on, having a clear, defined, and well-thought-out business plan is a crucial first step for setting up a business for long-term success.

Here’s why I think a business plan is important:

1. Securing Financing From Investors

Since its contents revolve around how businesses succeed, break-even, and turn a profit, a business plan is used as a tool for sourcing capital. This document is an entrepreneur's way of showing potential investors or lenders how their capital will be put to work and how it will help the business thrive.

I’ve seen that all banks, investors, and venture capital firms will want to see a business plan before handing over their money. Therefore, these investors need to know if — and when — they‘ll be making their money back (and then some).

Additionally, they’ll want to read about the process and strategy for how the business will reach those financial goals, which is where the context provided by sales, marketing, and operations plans come into play.

2. Documenting a Company's Strategy and Goals

I think a business plan should leave no stone unturned.

Business plans can span dozens or even hundreds of pages, affording their drafters the opportunity to explain what a business' goals are and how the business will achieve them.

To show potential investors that they've addressed every question and thought through every possible scenario, entrepreneurs should thoroughly explain their marketing, sales, and operations strategies — from acquiring a physical location for the business to explaining a tactical approach for marketing penetration.

These explanations should ultimately lead to a business' break-even point supported by a sales forecast and financial projections, with the business plan writer being able to speak to the why behind anything outlined in the plan.

3. Legitimizing a Business Idea

I’ve seen that everyone‘s got a great idea for a company — until they put pen to paper and realize that it’s not exactly feasible.

A business plan is an aspiring entrepreneur's way to prove that a business idea is actually worth pursuing.

As entrepreneurs document their go-to-market process, capital needs, and expected return on investment, entrepreneurs likely come across a few hiccups that will make them second guess their strategies and metrics — and that's exactly what the business plan is for.

It ensures you have everything in order before bringing their business idea to the world and reassures the readers that whoever wrote the plan is serious about the idea, having put hours into thinking of the business idea, fleshing out growth tactics, and calculating financial projections.

4. Getting an A in Your Business Class

Speaking from personal experience, there‘s a chance you’re here to get business plan ideas for your Business 101 class project.

If that's the case, might I suggest checking out this post on How to Write a Business Plan , which provides a section-by-section guide on creating your plan?

5. Identifying Potential Problems

Business plans act as early warning systems that identify potential problems before they escalate into major obstacles.

How? When you conduct thorough market research, analyze competitor strategies, and evaluate financial projections, your plan pinpoints vulnerabilities and risks. This allows you to develop contingency plans and risk mitigation strategies.

This helps you prevent costly mistakes and shows investors and lenders you’re well-prepared and have considered various scenarios.

6. Attracts and Retains Talent

A well-articulated plan outlines your company's vision, mission, and values, showcasing a clear direction and purpose. People who want meaningful work that aligns with their ambitions will love this.

Also, it shows the company's potential for growth and stability. This instills confidence in employees and assures them of a secure future and opportunities for career advancement.

When you show growth potential and highlight a positive work culture, your business plan becomes a magnet for top talent.

7. Provides a Roadmap

A business plan provides a detailed roadmap for your company's future. It outlines your objectives, strategies, and the specific actions you need to achieve your goals.

When you define your path forward, a business plan helps you stay focused and on track, even when you face challenges or distractions. It’s a great reference tool that allows you to make smart decisions that align with your overall vision.

This way, having a comprehensive roadmap in the form of a business plan provides direction and clarity at every stage of your business journey.

8. Serves as a Marketing Tool

A business plan is not only an internal guide but also serves as a powerful marketing tool. Your business plan can showcase your company‘s strengths, unique value proposition, and growth potential when you’re looking for investors, partnerships, or new clients.

It provides a professional and polished overview of your business, which shows your commitment and strategic thinking to potential stakeholders.

Your business plan helps you attract the right people by clearly articulating your target market, competitive advantages, and financial projections. In summary, it acts as a persuasive sales pitch.

• Business Plan Subtitle
• Executive Summary
• Company Description
• The Business Opportunity
• Competitive Analysis
• Target Market
• Marketing Plan
• Financial Summary
• Funding Requirements

1. Business Plan Subtitle

Every great business plan starts with a captivating title and subtitle. You’ll want to make it clear that the document is, in fact, a business plan, but the subtitle can help tell the story of your business in just a short sentence.

2. Executive Summary

Although this is the last part of the business plan that you’ll write, it’s the first section (and maybe the only section) that stakeholders will read.

The executive summary of a business plan sets the stage for the rest of the document. It includes your company’s mission or vision statement, value proposition, and long-term goals.

3. Company Description

This brief part of your business plan will detail your business name, years in operation, key offerings, and positioning statement.

You might even add core values or a short history of the company. The company description’s role in a business plan is to introduce your business to the reader in a compelling and concise way.

4. The Business Opportunity

The business opportunity should convince investors that your organization meets the needs of the market in a way that no other company can.

This section explains the specific problem your business solves within the marketplace and how it solves them. It will include your value proposition as well as some high-level information about your target market.

5. Competitive Analysis

Just about every industry has more than one player in the market. Even if your business owns the majority of the market share in your industry or your business concept is the first of its kind, you still have competition.

In the competitive analysis section, you’ll take an objective look at the industry landscape to determine where your business fits. A SWOT analysis is an organized way to format this section.

6. Target Market

Who are the core customers of your business and why? The target market portion of your business plan outlines this in detail. The target market should explain the demographics, psychographics, behavioristics, and geographics of the ideal customer.

7. Marketing Plan

Marketing is expansive, and it’ll be tempting to cover every type of marketing possible, but a brief overview of how you’ll market your unique value proposition to your target audience, followed by a tactical plan, will suffice.

Think broadly and narrow down from there: Will you focus on a slow-and-steady play where you make an upfront investment in organic customer acquisition? Or will you generate lots of quick customers using a pay-to-play advertising strategy?

This kind of information should guide the marketing plan section of your business plan.

8. Financial Summary

Money doesn’t grow on trees. Even the most digital, sustainable businesses have expenses. Outlining a financial summary of where your business is currently and where you’d like it to be in the future will substantiate this section.

Consider including any monetary information that will give potential investors a glimpse into the financial health of your business. Assets, liabilities, expenses, debt, investments, revenue, and more are all useful additions here.

So, you’ve outlined some great goals, the business opportunity is valid, and the industry is ready for what you have to offer. Who’s responsible for turning all this high-level talk into results?

The “team” section of your business plan answers that question by providing an overview of the roles responsible for each goal.

Don’t worry if you don’t have every team member on board yet. Knowing what roles to hire for is helpful as you seek funding from investors.

10. Funding Requirements

Remember that one of the goals of a business plan is to secure funding from investors, so you’ll need to include funding requirements you’d like them to fulfill.

Considering that global funding fell 61% from 2021 to 2023 , it’s very important to be clear in this section. Include the amount your business needs, for what reasons, and for how long.

• Startup Business Plan
• Feasibility Business Plan
• Internal Business Plan
• Strategic Business Plan
• Business Acquisition Plan
• Business Repositioning Plan
• Expansion or Growth Business Plan

There’s no one size fits all business plan as there are several types of businesses in the market today. From startups with just one founder to historic household names that need to stay competitive, every type of business needs a business plan that’s tailored to its needs. Below are a few of the most common types of business plans.

For even more examples, check out these sample business plans to help you write your own .

1. Startup Business Plan

As one of the most common types of business plans, a startup business plan is for new business ideas. This plan lays the foundation for the eventual success of a business.

I think the biggest challenge with the startup business plan is that it's written completely from scratch. Startup business plans often reference existing industry data. They also explain unique business strategies and go-to-market plans.

Because startup business plans expand on an original idea, the contents will vary by the top priority goals.

For example, say a startup is looking for funding. If capital is a priority, this business plan might focus more on financial projections than marketing or company culture.

Eric Heckstall , the founder and CEO of EDH Signature Inc ., which offers premier grooming products, also suggests keeping your startup business plan short.

“The traditional business plan can be 40+ pages, which is too large of a document to really be useful, can be difficult for staff to understand, and have to dig for information which most people won’t do,” Heckstall says.

Conversely, a one-to-two-page business plan improves clarity and focus. Heckstall says this format “is easy to use on a day-to-day basis, teams as well as potential investors can understand the purpose and direction of the company, and can easily be incorporated into team meetings.”

2. Feasibility Business Plan

This type of business plan focuses on a single essential aspect of the business — the product or service. It may be part of a startup business plan or a standalone plan for an existing organization. This comprehensive plan may include:

• A detailed product description.
• Market analysis.
• Technology needs.
• Production needs.
• Financial sources.
• Production operations.

Startups can fail because of a lack of market need and mistimed products. Plus, nearly half of entrepreneurs , founders, CEOs, and COOs report that price sensitivity and evolving market conditions are the number one prospect and customer challenges they face right now.

Some businesses will complete a feasibility study to explore ideas and narrow product plans to the best choice. They conduct these studies before completing the feasibility business plan. Then, the feasibility plan centers on that one product or service.

Zach Dannett , co-founder at rug company Tumble highlights how some business owners take a very idealistic approach too. And forget barriers to entry like regulatory issues in the process.

He adds how considering this aspect in their business plan helped.

Before launching the team, Dannett first took time to understand regulatory requirements in our industry, checking to make sure we needed to secure any certifications or licenses.

Then, “we reviewed financial requirements, which would cover initial investments, operational costs, and potential expenses. We then conducted thorough market research to understand our market, how saturated this market is, and identify major competitors with significant market share,” Dannett says

3. Internal Business Plan

Internal business plans help leaders communicate company goals, strategy, and performance. This helps the business align and work toward objectives more effectively.

Besides the typical elements in a startup business plan, an internal business plan may also include:

• Department-specific budgets.
• Target demographic analysis.
• Market size and share of voice analysis.
• Action plans.
• Sustainability plans.

Most external-facing business plans focus on raising capital and support for a business. But, an internal business plan helps keep the business mission consistent in the face of change.

You can also reduce your workload by using a free business template that helps you get a headstart on what to include.

4. Strategic Business Plan

Strategic business plans focus on long-term objectives for your business. They usually cover the first three to five years of operations. This is different from the typical startup business plan which focuses on the first one to three years. The audience for this plan is also primarily internal stakeholders.

These types of business plans may include:

• Relevant data and analysis.
• Assessments of company resources.
• Vision and mission statements.

It's important to remember that, while many businesses create a strategic plan before launching, some business owners just jump in.

David Sides , marketing specialist at The Gori Law , highlights how it’s important not to create this plan in isolation and involve key stakeholders from across the organization in the planning process.

“We make a point of bringing together attorneys, paralegals, and support staff to discuss our long-term goals and how we can work together to achieve them. This not only helps ensure buy-in and alignment, but it also allows you to tap into a wider range of perspectives and ideas,” Sides says.

This way, the strategic business plan can add value by outlining how your business plans to reach specific goals and considering a holistic perspective from the most important stakeholders. This type of planning can also help a business anticipate future challenges.

5. Business Acquisition Plan

Investors use business plans to acquire existing businesses, too — not just new businesses.

I recommend including costs, schedules, or management requirements. This data will come from an acquisition strategy.

A business plan for an existing company will explain:

• How an acquisition will change its operating model.
• What will stay the same under new ownership.
• Why things will change or stay the same.
• Acquisition planning documentation.
• Timelines for acquisition.

Ilia Tretiakov , owner and lead strategist, at So Good Digital , a marketing agency suggests adding a Day Zero Plan. This is a thorough plan outlining the steps you will take the moment the acquisition is completed.

It consists of stakeholder communication plans, critical system integration, quick operational adjustments, and cultural alignment initiatives.

Here’s why Ilia believes it’s important.

“A Day Zero Plan establishes the framework for the integration process and guarantees a seamless transition. This comprehensive strategy goes above and beyond the typical post-acquisition integration plan, taking care of urgent issues and laying the groundwork for long-term success,” Tretiakov says,

Apart from this, I believe the business plan should speak to the current state of the business and why it's up for sale.

For example, if someone is purchasing a failing business, the business plan should explain why the business is being purchased. It should also include:

• What the new owner will do to turn the business around.
• Historic business metrics.
• Sales projections after the acquisition.
• Justification for those projections.

6. Business Repositioning Plan

When a business wants to avoid acquisition, reposition its brand, or try something new, CEOs or owners will develop a business repositioning plan.

This plan will:

• Acknowledge the current state of the company.
• State a vision for the future of the company.
• Explain why the business needs to reposition itself.
• Outline a process for how the company will adjust.

Companies planning for a business reposition often do so — proactively or retroactively — due to a shift in market trends and customer needs.

For example, shoe brand AllBirds plans to refocus its brand on core customers and shift its go-to-market strategy. These decisions are a reaction to lackluster sales following product changes and other missteps.

7. Expansion or Growth Business Plan

When your business is ready to expand, a growth business plan creates a useful structure for reaching specific targets.

For example, a successful business expanding into another location can use a growth business plan. This is because it may also mean the business needs to focus on a new target market or generate more capital.

This type of plan usually covers the next year or two of growth. It often references current sales, revenue, and successes. It may also include:

• SWOT analysis.
• Growth opportunity studies.
• Financial goals and plans.
• Marketing plans.
• Capability planning.

These types of business plans will vary by business, but they can help you quickly rally around new priorities to drive growth.

Getting Started With Your Business Plan

At the end of the day, a business plan is simply an explanation of a business idea and why it will be successful. The more detail and thought you put into it, the more successful your plan — and the business it outlines — will be.

I personally recommend using the feasibility business plan template. It helps me assess the viability of my business idea before diving in head-first.

By completing a feasibility plan, I feel more confident and prepared to tackle the full business plan. Plus, it saves me time and effort in the long run by ensuring I'm pursuing an idea with real potential.

When writing your business plan, you’ll benefit from extensive research, feedback from your team or board of directors, and a solid template to organize your thoughts. If you need one of these, download HubSpot's Free Business Plan Template below to get started.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in August 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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1. Client Dependence

2. money management, 4. founder dependence, 5. balancing quality and growth, what is the biggest problem for small businesses, what is the biggest mistake small businesses make, what are the disadvantages facing owners of small businesses, the bottom line.

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Starting a business is a significant achievement for many entrepreneurs, but maintaining one is the larger challenge. There are many challenges that every business—large or small—faces. Hiring the right people, building a brand, and developing a customer base are some common challenges. However, there are some unique challenges to operating a small business.

Here are the five most significant challenges for small businesses.

Key Takeaways

• It's important that a small business is never dependent on a single client.
• Small businesses can struggle with money management; hiring a professional to help with money management can free up time to focus on operating concerns.
• Overworking is another challenge of operating a small business; it's essential to find the right balance between working long hours and business success.
• Many small businesses can become dependent on their founder; a small business owner should not create a situation where the business cannot continue in their absence.
• Starting a small business may be different than simply working as a freelancer.

If a single client makes up more than half of your income, you are operating in a way that more closely resembles an independent contractor than a business owner. Diversifying your client base is vital to growing a business, but it can be difficult—especially when the client in question pays well. (Having a client who pays on time for a service is a godsend for many small businesses.)

Unfortunately, client dependence can result in a longer-term handicap; even if you have employees, you may still be technically operating as a subcontractor for another business. This arrangement allows the client to avoid any of the risks of adding payroll to an area of its business operations where work may dry up at any time; as a result, all of that risk is transferred from the larger company to your small business (and your employees). This arrangement is risky, but it can work if your main client has a consistent need for your product or service.

Having enough cash to cover the bills is necessary for any business, but it is also necessary for your personal finances. Between your business and your personal finances, one of these will likely emerge as a capital drain and put pressure on the other. To avoid this problem, small business owners must be heavily capitalized—or secure extra income to shore up cash reserves when needed. Many small businesses start with the founders working a job and building a business simultaneously. While this split focus can make it challenging to grow a business, running out of cash actually makes growing a business impossible.

Money management becomes even more important when cash is flowing into the business. Although handling business accounting and taxes may be within the purview of most business owners, professional help is usually a good idea . The complexity of a company’s books increases with each client and employee; seeking out assistance on bookkeeping tasks can prevent it from becoming a reason not to expand.

The hours, the work, and the constant pressure to perform wear on even the most passionate individuals. Many business owners—even successful ones—get stuck working much longer hours than their employees. Moreover, small business owners may fear their business will stall in their absence and avoid taking any time away from work to recharge.

Fatigue can lead to rash decisions about the business, including the desire to abandon it altogether. Finding a pace that keeps the business humming, without wearing out the owner, is a challenge that can come up early in the evolution of a small business.

It is generally better for a business to have a diversified client base to pick up the slack when any single client quits paying.

A business that can't operate without its founder is a business with a deadline. Many businesses suffer from founder dependence; this is often caused by the founder being unable to let go of certain decisions and responsibilities as the business grows.

In theory, meeting this challenge is easy—a business owner needs to give more control to employees or partners. In practice, however, this is a significant stumbling block for founders because it usually involves compromising (at least initially) the quality of work being done.

Growth should never be the enemy of quality. A small business needs both.

Even when a business is not founder-dependent, there comes a time when the challenges that arise as a result of the business's growth are equal to (or even outweigh) the benefits. Whether it's a service or a product, at some point a business must sacrifice quality to scale up. This may mean not being able to personally manage every client relationship or not inspecting every component of a final product.

Unfortunately, it may be that level of personal engagement and attention to detail that makes a business successful. Therefore, many small business owners find themselves tied to these habits. There is a large middle ground between shoddy work and an unhealthy obsession with quality; it is up to the business owner to navigate its processes toward a compromise that allows growth without hurting the brand.

While small business owners face many challenges in growing and scaling their businesses, it is an excellent time to be a small business owner in the U.S. today. Between March 2021 and March 2022, 1.4 million new small businesses opened in the U.S. When opening a small business, many founders struggle with finding qualified, hardworking employees. Another big problem that small businesses face is a lack of funds. If even one client fails to make a payment, it can have huge consequences for the business. Finally, many businesses struggle with balancing growth and quality. Sometimes it may be necessary to sacrifice quality in order to scale in size.

Starting a small business is undoubtedly challenging, even for the most experienced entrepreneur; the statistics about the high number of businesses that close within a year are a testament to these challenges. However, there are certain mistakes you can avoid in the short term to make success in the long term more likely. One of the most common mistakes that small business owners make is not creating a comprehensive business plan in the beginning. This business plan should include a large amount of research. (Research that should be done before starting the business.) The business plan should include information about how the profit model of the business, market research about the local competition and demand for the product, the operations of the business, an outline of all sales and marketing efforts, investment data, and financial projections.

There are many advantages to being an entrepreneur. First and foremost, working for yourself can offer a level of freedom you cannot find working in a traditional job, with a boss or manager. However, owners of small businesses face many disadvantages that employees do not face. Top of mind for many people considering opening a small business is the high probability of income instability. There is also a significant amount of financial risk that you incur if you finance your small business with a business loan. You may also work longer hours than a traditional employee. Plus, you'll lack the guidance or direction of a traditional employee, who has a boss or manager to provide support. In the beginning stages of starting a business, seek out the help of a mentor or a consultant.

The problems faced by small businesses are considerable, and one of the worst things a would-be owner can do is go into business without considering the challenges ahead . We’ve looked at ways to help make these challenges more accessible, but there is no avoiding them.

On the other hand, a competitive drive is often one of the reasons people start their own business, and every challenge represents another opportunity to compete.

U.S. Chamber of Commerce. " 5 Ways to Achieve Better Work-Life Balance Even Though Your Business Never Stops ."

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What Is a Business Plan?

A business plan is a written document that outlines your business. It covers everything from your business history and current status to your sales and marketing strategy and how you plan on turning a profit. A business plan is critical for all businesses, no matter how small or large. Without one, it's difficult to track your progress and make adjustments as needed. Plus, if you're ever looking for investors or loans, a strong business plan will give them the confidence they need to support your venture.

Why do I need a business plan?

A business plan is important because it gives you a road map to follow as you start and grow your business. It can help you attract new investors and customers, and keep everyone on track as you move forward.

How often should I update my business plan?

You should update your business plan as your business grows and changes. At a minimum, you should review and revise it annually. However, you may need to make more frequent updates if you're experiencing rapid growth or making major changes to your business.

What are the three main purposes of a business plan?

The three main purposes of a business plan are to:

- Help you get a clear picture of your business and what you want it to achieve

Here are a few tips to help you write a successful business plan:

- Do your research. Before you start writing, find out as much as you can about your industry and what it takes to start and grow a successful business in that field.

- Be realistic. Don't try to inflate your numbers or make unrealistic predictions in an effort to make your business look more successful than it is. Investors will see through this and it will damage your credibility.

- Keep it concise. No one wants to read a 100-page business plan. Try to keep your plan to 10 pages or less, with clear and concise language.

- Get help if you need it. If you're not sure where to start, there are plenty of business plan templates and examples available online. You can also hire a professional business plan writer to get the job done for you.

What are some common mistakes to avoid when writing a business plan?

Here are a few common mistakes to avoid when writing a business plan:

- Not doing your research. Before you start writing, find out as much as you can about your industry and what it takes to start and grow a successful business in that field.

- Making unrealistic predictions. Don't try to inflate your numbers or make unrealistic predictions in an effort to make your business look more successful than it is. Investors will see through this and it will damage your credibility.

- Overcomplicating things. No one wants to read a 100-page business plan. Try to keep your plan to 10 pages or less, with clear and concise language.

- Not getting help when you need it. If you're not sure where to start, there are plenty of business plan templates and examples available online.

Types of business plans:

There are two types of business plans: traditional and lean startup.

Traditional business plans

A traditional business plan is a document that typically includes detailed information about the company's products or services, marketing strategy, management team, financial projections, and more. This type of business plan is often used by banks and other investors to get a better understanding of the company before they provide funding.

Writing a traditional business plan can be a daunting task, but it doesn't have to be. By understanding the structures of traditional business plan s and what should be included in each section, you can make the process much simpler.

A traditional business plan typically includes the following sections:

- The executive summary is the first section of the business plan and it should provide an overview of the main points of the plan.

- The company description is the second section and it should provide more detail about the company, its history, its products or services, and its mission.

- The market analysis is the third section and it should provide information about the target market, the competition, and the market trends.

-The fourth section, sales and marketing strategy, should describe how the company plans to generate sales and grow the business.

-The fifth section, management team, should provide information about the company's management team and its experience.

-The sixth section, financial projections, should provide financial information about the company, such as its revenue, expenses, and profitability.

- The appendix is the last section of the plan and it should include any additional information that would be helpful for understanding the company.

Lean business plans

A Lean business plan or Lean startup business plan is a shorter and simpler version of a traditional business plan. It focuses on the key elements of the company, such as the problem that it solves, the target market, the solution, the business model, and key metrics. This type of business plan is often used by startup companies that want to get a better understanding of their business before they start raising money.

Simple business planning makes writing a plan faster and easier, and helps you get your thoughts down on paper so that you can better understand your business.

To write a lean startup business plan, you'll need to:

-Identify your target market

-Describe your solution

-Explain your business model

-Define your key metrics

-Set your milestones

How should a business plan look?

A good business plan should be:

- Concise: The best business plans are clear, concise, and to the point. They are not overly long or filled with unnecessary fluff.

- Realistic: A good business plan is realistic and achievable. It sets realistic goals and milestones, and it doesn't make promises that can't be kept.

- Flexible: A good business plan is flexible and can be adjusted as the company grows and changes.

- Focused: A good business plan is focused on a specific market or opportunity. It doesn't try to do too much or be all things to all people.

When you're writing a business plan, it's important to keep in mind that the goal is to create a document that will be used to help you run and grow your business. This means that the plan should be clear, concise, and achievable. It should also be flexible so that it can be adjusted as the company grows and changes.

Finally, it should be focused on a specific market or opportunity. By remembering these key points, you can make sure that your business plan is as effective as possible.

How to Write a Solid Business Plan, Step by Step Guide

There are some key steps that all businesses should take when writing a business plan.

1. Define the purpose of the business plan.

2. Research the market and competition.

3. Describe the company and its products or services.

4. Develop a marketing and sales strategy.

5. Create financial projections.

6. Write the executive summary.

7. assemble and organize the plan.

8 Review and revise the plan as needed.

By following these steps, you can be sure that your business plan is comprehensive and well-organized, and that it will effectively communicate your business's goals and objectives.

Challenges you face while writing a detailed business plan

Writing a business plan is not a cup of tea. It includes many tasks like establishing the business’ focus, obtaining funding, and getting new investors. Your business plan is essentially your road map to success. 

It is critical to have a business plan if you are obtaining funds and the difficulty you face depends upon the type of business you have, the size of your business, and the intricacy of your desired result.

It is unique to every business as it tells about:-  

• The current position of your organisation, 
• Overall prospects of your industry(e.g., developing, stagnant or decreasing), 
• How you stand unique among the competitors, 
• What are your predictions for your sales and revenue for the next year, next five years, etc., 
• How will you make your estimation realistic?

For industries like finance, there are additional regulations that have to be included.

The challenges you face while writing a business plan depend upon the type of business you have, the size of your business, and the intricacy of your desired result. However, some key challenges include:

- Getting Started: The most important and difficult part about writing a business plan is getting it started. Until and unless you make a blueprint of how you should strategize it, you will continue messing it up. When you start making a business plan, lock yourself in a room, switch off your phones, and focus.

-  Defining the purpose of the plan:  What is the goal of the business plan? What are you hoping to achieve with it?

- Researching the market and competition: What is the current market landscape? Who are your major competitors?

- Describing the company and its products or services: What does your company do? What are its unique selling points?

- Developing a marketing and sales strategy: How will you generate leads and convert them into customers?

- Writing the executive summary: How do you concisely and effectively communicate the key points of the plan?

- Assembling and organizing the plan: How do you structure the plan so that it is easy to read and understand?

- Reviewing and revising the plan: Is the plan realistic and achievable? Does it need to be updated as the company grows and changes?

- Financial Estimation: It is difficult to estimate the figures on a brand-new concept. There is no roadmap, nobody whom you can follow. Find a similar company and try to measure how they identify their cash flows and make the plan.

- Prove that your business idea is best:  One of the challenging problems in writing a business plan is to prove the investors and lenders that your idea is worth their investments otherwise they won’t take interest in your idea.

- Realistic Business Plans:  You need to be honest about the plans, generally, entrepreneurs’ dream about their business, and when they make a business plan, it challenges their assumptions about the opportunities in their market, its competition, products and growth estimations. That is where they get caught up in defining an executable business plan. Create a strategy that you will actually be working upon not just making castles in the air.

By keeping these challenges in mind, you can ensure that your business plan is as strong as possible.

Is it hard to write a business plan?

The difficulty you face depends upon the type of business you have, the size of your business, and the intricacy of your desired result.

Do I Need a Simple or Detailed Plan?

The type of business plan you need depends on your goals and objectives. If you are seeking funding, you will need a more comprehensive and detailed plan. If you are not seeking funding, a simpler and shorter plan may suffice.

How long does it take to write a business plan?

Again, the answer to this question depends on the type of business you have, the size of your business, and the intricacy of your desired result. A simple plan can be completed in a matter of hours, while a more detailed plan can take days or even weeks to complete. No matter what type of business you have, it is important to take the time to carefully craft a well-thought-out business plan.

Who can make me a business plan?

There are a number of resources available to help you write a business plan. You can hire a professional business plan writer, use a business plan template or software, or even do it yourself.

The 5 toughest things entrepreneurs face when starting a business

1. Coming up with a business idea

2. Researching the market and competition

3. Describing the company and its products or services

4. Developing a marketing and sales strategy

5. Creating financial projections

Are business plans useful?

Business plans can be an invaluable tool for any business, small or large. By taking the time to write a comprehensive and well-organized plan, you can effectively communicate your company's goals and objectives, and make sure that everyone on your team is on the same page.

A business plan can also help you raise money from investors, and keep track of your company's progress over time. Whether you are starting a new business or growing an existing one, a business plan is an essential tool.

By taking the time to research and write a well-thought-out plan, you can increase your chances of success and ensure that your business is on the right track.

8 Tips for Successful Business plan

There are a 8 key pieces that should be included in every successful business plan.

-The company's products or services: Describe the problem that your product or service solves and how it is different from other products or services on the market. Be sure to include information about the features and benefits of your product or service.

-The target market: Describe the people or businesses that you plan to sell your product or service to. Be sure to include information about their needs and how your product or service meets those needs.

-The marketing strategy: Describe how you plan to market your product or service to your target market. Be sure to include information about your sales process, pricing strategy, and promotional activities.

-The management team: Introduce the people who will be responsible for running the day-to-day operations of the business. Be sure to include information about their experience, skills, and education.

-The financial projections: Include detailed financial statements that show how much money you expect to make and spend over the next three years. Be sure to include information about your revenue, expenses, and profits.

-The company's history: Describe the history of the company, including any milestones or accomplishments.

-The risks and challenges: Discuss the risks and challenges that your business faces and how you plan to overcome them.

-The exit strategy: Describe how you plan to exit the business, such as selling it to another company or taking it public.

FAQs on Writing a Business plan

What is the biggest mistake in preparing a business plan.

The biggest mistake is not doing your homework. Make sure you understand your industry, your market, your competition, and your customers before you start writing your business plan.

Do I need a business plan if I'm not seeking funding?

While a business plan is not required if you are not seeking funding, it can still be a valuable tool for any business. A business plan can help you to clarify your goals and objectives, and keep track of your company's progress over time.

Can I use a business plan template?

Yes, there are many business plan templates available online. However, it is important to make sure that the template you choose is appropriate for your industry and business model.

How long should my business plan be?

There is no hard and fast rule for the length of a business plan. However, a good rule of thumb is to keep it as concise as possible. Your goal should be to communicate your company's key points in a clear and concise manner.

What makes a bad business plan?

A bad business plan is one that is either too long or too short, and does not effectively communicate your company's key points. It should also be free of grammar and spelling errors, and should be clear and easy to read.

How can I make my business plan stand out?

One way to make your business plan stand out is to include a cover letter that briefly introduces your company and its products or services. You should also make sure to proofread your business plan carefully, and have someone else read it as well before you submit it.

Why do some business plans fail?

There are many reasons why business plans fail. Sometimes, the company does not do enough research on the market or the competition. Other times, the plan is not well-written or organized. And sometimes, the company simply does not have a viable business model.

You should update your business plan as your company grows and changes. As your business evolves, so too should your business plan. Review and update your plan at least once a year, or more often if needed.

What are the biggest challenges in scaling a business?

The biggest challenges in scaling a business include finding new customers, expanding into new markets, and hiring new employees. As your company grows, you will need to find ways to reach new customers and continue to provide excellent customer service. Additionally, you will need to expand your operations to meet the demands of your growing business. Finally, you will need to hire new employees to support your company's growth.

A business plan is a road map to success and is critical for obtaining funding. A well-written, proofread business plan will make your company more likely to succeed. The biggest challenges in scaling a business include finding new customers, expanding into new markets, and hiring new employees.

With careful planning and execution, you can overcome these challenges and successfully scale your business. By following these tips, you can ensure that your company is well-positioned for growth. By following these tips, you can write a comprehensive and well-organized business plan that will help you achieve your desired results. With a little time and effort, you can put your company on the path to success.

By  The Thrive

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The 4 Biggest Challenges of Starting a Business (and How to Overcome Them)

Starting a business isn't for the faint of heart. Identifying and tackling your challenges are crucial for success.

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There are many excellent reasons to start a business, including working for yourself, earning more money, having a flexible work schedule and expanding your skill set. However, like all worthwhile endeavors, starting and building a new business is challenging. 

If you’re passionate about your business idea, don’t let inevitable entrepreneurial pain points keep you from following through and making your business ownership dream a reality. As most small business owners will tell you, the risks and challenges are usually worth the rewards. 

The biggest challenges of starting a business

Consider the following four challenges most entrepreneurs face when starting a business and start thinking about how you’ll overcome them.

1. Running the show alone is a business ownership challenge.

New business owners wear many hats as they get their operations up and running, often handling sales, marketing, accounting, information technology (IT) and more. However, they likely don’t excel in all areas and may end up feeling overwhelmed. 

Entrepreneurs often find themselves moving from task to task, putting out fires with one hand while completing everyday tasks with the other. As experienced business owners know, handling everything for too long is bad for your mental and physical health and can take a toll on business productivity .

How to overcome the challenges of running the operation alone

Be honest about your strengths and weaknesses and understand that your time is precious when running a business. While you can certainly embrace professional growth and learn more, sharing the load is key. 

Editor’s note: Looking for the right loan for your business? Fill out the below questionnaire to have our vendor partners contact you about your needs.

Here are some tips for handling the myriad tasks required when running a business:

• Look for outside help: Seek help in the areas where you struggle. For example, hire a virtual assistant, use a marketing agency or find an IT partner . Hire full-time and part-time employees as you grow to lighten your load. 
• Utilize Small Business Association (SBA) resources: Explore the SBA’s Office of Small Business Development Centers . This SBA program provides one-stop assistance to current and prospective small business owners, with experts in local offices throughout the United States. sharing information on handling many aspects of running a business.
• Get organized: To combat feeling overwhelmed, make your business more organized . Write down and define your daily tasks and goals. Once you’ve identified your tasks, list them in order of priority and cluster-related tasks. Prioritizing helps you determine which tasks and goals to tackle at the most productive time of your day. Organizing and clustering help you handle similar tasks in the same period instead of sporadically.

2. Finding funding is a crucial challenge when starting a business.

Finding investors and funding is one of the biggest startup challenges new business owners face. Not every business needs an immediate, significant cash infusion, but you must ensure you can keep the business running for the long term.

How to overcome funding challenges

When starting a business, you’ll likely apply for small business loans , seek a line of credit, self-fund the business or raise capital. 

Here are some best practices for overcoming startup funding challenges:

• Utilize SCORE resources: SCORE offers mentors, education and advisors to help small businesses succeed. Speak with a mentor at SCORE to get their thoughts on the best funding course of action for your business based on your goals.
• Consider a microloan: Microloans ― typically for less than $50,000 ― are another option for new business owners. Because they’re smaller, microloans are easier to qualify for and provide borrowing opportunities that may not otherwise be available to you. You can use a microloan for a startup project, to get a business off the ground, as working capital or to fund equipment purchases, office leases or new hires. Different microlenders have various rules about using the funds and different qualification requirements (such as a minimum credit score ). 
• Consider an SBA loan: SBA small business loan programs aim to help entrepreneurs who want to start or expand a business. (The SBA also has a microloan program, so contact your local SBA office to learn more.)
• Create an investor pitch: Before presenting your business idea to investors , perfect your pitch. Investors, banks and other lenders will want to understand your vision for success. The better you articulate this vision, the more likely you’ll get the funding you need.

3. Finding and attracting customers is a business startup challenge.

Attracting customers is an area where many new businesses stumble. After all, if no one buys what you’re selling, you can’t succeed. Ideally, you conducted market research before launching your business to ensure your offerings had a receptive market. Now you must identify your target audience , understand their needs and determine what they’re willing to pay.  

How to overcome the challenge of attracting customers:

To find and attract customers, you must create a marketing plan that identifies the following: 

• Your target market
• Your product’s strengths and weaknesses compared to the competition
• Your marketing position and message
• Where you plan to market your product 
• Your marketing budget 

Many new businesses have slim marketing budgets, so low-cost ways to make a big impact are essential. For example, marketers on a budget can consider the following: 

• Creating social media marketing campaigns
• Setting up co-marketing agreements with companies that sell complementary products
• Creating email marketing campaigns
• Utilizing video marketing to create brand trust
• Hosting events or initiatives the media will cover

4. Maintaining a work-life balance is challenging when starting a business.

Any seasoned entrepreneur can tell you about the challenges of maintaining a positive work-life balance . It’s easy to find yourself on the computer from early morning to dinner, only to spend another few hours at night crossing more items off your list. You may suddenly find yourself manic about work and business-related tasks, neglecting responsibilities in other areas of your life. Exercise, time with friends and family and sleep are often taken for granted.

How to overcome work-life balance challenges

As difficult as it might be, establishing a routine that sets clear boundaries between work and free or family time is crucial. Everyone manages their days differently, but if putting “run three miles at lunchtime” on your calendar makes you stick to the commitment, do it.

If you cross everything off your to-do list by 8 p.m., don’t start diving into tomorrow’s tasks. Spend that extra time with family or consider going to bed early. Your body and mind will thank you.

Resources for starting a business

In addition to the SBA and SCORE, many resources can help entrepreneurs set up and run new businesses.

1. Turn to your local chamber of commerce.

Your local chamber of commerce likely has educational materials and videos on starting a business. But even more impactful is meeting, mingling with and getting advice from established business people in your area. They can help you navigate local government requirements, point you in the right direction when you need vendors and give you industry-specific advice. 

Your chamber of commerce also likely offers various networking and marketing opportunities, including networking events ― (particularly helpful if you have a business-to-business (B2B) business ― directories, trade shows, job fairs, leadership events and lunch-and-learn events.

2. Create a LinkedIn profile.

Consider creating a LinkedIn business profile . In addition to peer-to-peer communication and networking, LinkedIn helps business owners learn about and participate in free webinars, market their businesses and participate in industry-specific or topic-specific groups. LinkedIn also has a small business resource center with free online courses, written resources on various business topics and virtual events. 

3. Find a mentor. 

Do you know someone with experience in the type of business you’re starting? Ask them to become your mentor. A mentorship is an informal arrangement where a more experienced person agrees to help and discuss business questions and challenges with you. Mentors can give you great advice, pose questions and issues you may not have considered, help keep you focused and balanced and introduce you to potential customers, partners or funding sources.

4. Check out HR.com.

Although you may start with no employees, you’ll probably need to hire some as you grow your business. HR.com is an excellent HR resource that can help you stay on top of employee and workplace-related regulations , taxes and benefits. It has free HR compliance posters you can download and print, industry trends and research reports and thousands of educational webcasts. After you hire your first HR person , they can take HR certification prep courses at HR.com and earn recertification credits. 

4. Access Google’s business resources.

As soon as your business is up and running, create a Google Business Profile so you can control your business’s information across all of Google’s services. Your Google Business Profile will help you appear in local searches, improve your website’s SEO strategy , give your company credibility and allow you to gather reviews. 

Google also provides tools for entrepreneurs at a nominal price ($6 per user per month) via Google Workspace, which includes Gmail, Google Drive, Google Meet, Google Calendar, Google Chat, Google Docs, Sheets and Slides to enable seamless communication and collaboration. Google Analytics , which is free, shows you how many people visit your website, how long they stay, where they come from and other information.

If you have a topic you want to learn more about, Google for Small Business provides courses on marketing-related topics like SEO, gathering insights, starting an online store and using email marketing and digital advertising. Most (if not all) of these courses will point you toward Google’s products, but since it’s the 600-pound gorilla of search and digital advertising, it’s valuable information.

Dave Thomas contributed to this article.

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Writing a Business Plan? 13 Challenges to Overcome

Starting a business? Entrepreneurs know that dreaming up a business idea is the easy part — it’s making your dreams come to fruition that’s the real challenge. And one of the first steps to taking on that challenge is creating a business plan, a task that can be pretty daunting no matter how great your idea is.

Your business plan is essentially your map to success — it’s an outline of the goals, research and projections you have for your new company so that you can stay on the right track, and is an especially important document to have if you’re seeking funding.

Business News Daily asked business owners, strategists and experts what the most difficult part of writing a business plan is. Here are 13 challenges you’ll face writing your business plan.

Actually starting it

“The hardest part about writing a business plan is getting it started. Lock yourself in a room, turn off your phone and focus.”

– John Gavigan, executive director, 43North

Filling out your financials

“The most difficult part of writing a business plan is the financial section. It is difficult to project figures on a brand-new business with, possibly, a brand-new concept. There is not roadmap, no one to follow. The best you can do is find a similar company and try to gauge what they are making.”

– Rosemary O’Brien, owner, Pocket Parks Publishing

Knowing your demographics

“The hardest but most important piece is getting your target demographics dialed in properly. You need to know who you’ll be selling to and how big the market is to estimate with some accuracy how many people you can reach and sell your product or service to.”

– David Batchelor, founder, DialMyCalls.com

Planning for tech changes

“Predicting the unforeseen technology variables that the future holds [is a challenge]. When I started my business nearly 10 years ago, there was no marketing on Facebook, and Twitter and Instagram did not yet exist. Today, these social media platforms play a huge role in my business’ marketing strategy and directly affect sales.”

– Monif Clarke, CEO and founder, Monif C.

Being concise

“[One of the top challenges is] keeping it short and sweet. The more concise and focused a plan is, the more likely business owners are to achieve the goals they have set out for themselves and their business.”

– Rick Faulk, chairman and CEO, Intronis

Making it interesting

“The hardest thing about writing a business plan is being able to tell your story in such a way that people buy into your idea. If you tell a lousy story, people won’t want to invest.”

– MJ Pedone, president and founder, Indra Public Relations

Establishing workable goals

“Establishing clear, concise and understandable goals — these goals must also be realistic. When people can’t see the vision of the plan, they won’t take action to pursue the plan. In addition, by having set goals that align with your plan, you have measureable targets to track your progress.” – Mike Rodriguez, coach and business consultant

Staying grounded

“[You need] to be honest with yourself. Entrepreneurs are by nature dreamers and optimists and business plans require them to challenge their assumptions about market opportunity, the competition, the value of their product and growth projections. That is where they get caught up in defining an aspirational, but somewhat realistic, business plan.” – Vikram Aggarwal, CEO and founder,EnergySage

Being realistic about the outcome

“The biggest issue I see with most business plans is lack of perspective. Excited by their idea, business plan writers start from the point of view that it can’t fail and never fully identify all of the risks associated with their plan.”

– Charlie Johnson, president, Magnolia Financial

Finding the right amount of flexibility

“The hardest thing about writing a business plan is making it flexible enough to allow for change without making it so flexible that it isn’t really a plan. There is a happy medium between these worlds and this is where the most success can be found.”

– Idan Shpizear, owner and founder, 911 Restoration

Proving that your idea is worth it

“Proving monetization is undoubtedly the biggest challenge when it comes to developing business plans. Often, startups will have innovative ideas and a lot of ambition, but not necessarily a budget or the funding to bring their ideas to life. When companies come to us, we always ask [if there is] a need, because need drives business. If there is no need, you won’t be able to succeed with your business plan.”

– Kim Connors, director of strategy, Blue Fountain Media

Being unable to predict everything accurately

“No matter how detailed you make [your business plan], you will always be wrong! Predicting revenues is like looking into a crystal ball. Costs are easier to predict as they are under the company’s control and depend on overall strategy and focus, but even here, some costs may be contingent.”

– Neha Mittal, head of strategy and business development, Arrow Devices

Making your plan useful

“In my experience, the biggest challenges CEOs face is creating a business plan that can actually be successfully implemented. Many companies create plans, but too often, those plans sit on the shelf with actions not done, targets not met.”

– Renee Fellman, management expert, Renee Fellman & Associates

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Guide to Creating a Business Plan With Template

To make your business idea a reality, you need a business plan. These simple business plan templates will get you started.

Table of Contents

Having a road map helps you reach your journey’s end successfully. Business plans do the same for small businesses. They lay out the milestones you need to reach to build a profitable small business. They are also essential for identifying and overcoming obstacles along the way. Each part of a business plan helps you reach your goals, including the financial aspects, marketing, operations and sales.

Plenty of online business plan templates are available to take some of the pain out of the plan-writing process. You may benefit from simple, easy-to-follow business plan tools so you spend less time writing and more time launching your venture.

What is a business plan?

With most great business ideas , the best way to execute them is to have a plan. A business plan is a written outline that you present to others, such as investors, whom you want to recruit into your venture. It’s your pitch to your investors, sharing with them what the goals of your startup are and how you expect to be profitable. 

It also serves as your company’s road map, keeping your business on track and ensuring your operations grow and evolve to meet the goals outlined in your plan. As circumstances change, a business plan can serve as a living document but it should always include the core goals of your business.

Starting a new business comes with challenges. Being prepared for those challenges can decrease their impact on your business greatly. One important step in preparing for the challenges your startup may face is writing a solid business plan.

Writing a business plan helps you understand more clearly what you need to do to reach your goals. The finished business plan also serves as a reminder to you of these goals. It’s a valuable tool that you can refer back to, helping you stay focused and on track.

What is the purpose of a business plan? 

Before you write your business plan, it’s important to understand the purpose of creating it in the first place. These are the three main reasons you should have a business plan:

• Establish a business focus: The primary purpose of a business plan is to establish your plans for the future. These plans should include goals or milestones alongside detailed steps of how your company will reach each step. The process of creating a road map to your goals will help you determine your business focus and pursue growth.
• Secure funding: One of the first things private investors , banks or other lenders look for before investing in your business is a well-researched business plan. Investors want to know how you operate your business, what your revenue and expense projections are and, most importantly, how they will receive a return on their investment. 
• Attract executives:  As your business grows, you’ll likely need to add executives to your team. A business plan helps you attract executive talent and determine whether or not they are a good fit for your company.  

Your business plan can be written as a document or designed as a slideshow, such as a PowerPoint presentation. It may be beneficial to create both versions. For example, the PowerPoint can be used to pull people in, and the document version that contains more detail can be given to viewers as a follow-up.

What are the types of business plans?

There are two main types of business plans: lean startup and traditional. Traditional business plans are long, detailed plans that expound on both short-term and long-term objectives. In comparison, a lean startup business plan focuses on a high-level summary with a few key metrics in concise detail to quickly share data with investors.

Lean startup business plan

Business model expert Ash Maurya has developed a basic type of business plan called a lean canvas. The model, which was developed in 2010, is still one of the most popular types of business plans emulated today.

A lean canvas comprises nine sections, with each part of the plan containing high-value information and metrics to attract investors. This lean business plan often consists of a single page of information with the following listed:

• Key metrics
• Unique proposition
• Unfair advantage
• Customer segments
• Cost structures
• Revenue streams

Traditional business plan 

Traditional plans are lengthy documents, sometimes as long as 30 or 40 pages. A traditional business plan acts as a blueprint of a new business, detailing its progress from the time it launches to several years in the future when the startup is an established business. The following areas are covered in a traditional business plan:

• Executive summary
• Company description
• Products and services
• Market analysis
• Management team
• Financial plan
• Operational plan

What is included in a business plan?

1. executive summary .

The executive summary is the most important section of your business plan because it needs to draw your readers into your plan and entice them to continue reading. If your executive summary doesn’t capture the reader’s attention, they won’t read further and their interest in your business won’t be piqued.

Even though the executive summary is the first section of your business plan, you should write it last. When you are ready to write this section, we recommend that you summarize the problem (or market need) you aim to solve, your solution for consumers, an overview of the founders and/or owners and key financial details. Knowing the alternate solutions that currently exist for the problem/market need will highlight to a potential investor how well you know the market. The key to this section is to be brief yet engaging.

2. Company description 

This section is an overview of your entire business. Make sure you include basic information, such as when your company was founded, the type of business entity it is ― limited liability company, sole proprietorship, partnership , C corporation or S corporation ― and the state in which it is registered. If you plan to do business in a state other than the one you have registered in, be sure to highlight which states. Provide a summary of your company’s history to give the readers a solid understanding of its foundation. Learn more about articles of incorporation and what you need to know to start a business.

3. Products and services 

Next, describe the products and/or services your business provides. Focus on your customers’ perspective ― and needs ― by demonstrating the problem you are trying to solve by providing this product or service. The goal of this section is to prove that your business fills a bona fide market need and will remain viable for the foreseeable future.

4. Market analysis 

In this section, clearly define who your target audience is, where you will find customers, how you will reach them and, most importantly, how you will deliver your product or service to them. Provide a deep analysis of your ideal customer and how your business provides a solution for them. 

You should also include your competitors in this section and illustrate how your business is uniquely different from the established companies in the industry or market. What are their strengths and weaknesses and how will you differentiate yourself from the pack?

You will also need to write a marketing plan based on the context of your business. For example, if you’re a small local business, you’ll want to analyze your competitors who are located nearby. Franchises need to conduct a large-scale analysis, potentially on a national level. Competitor data helps you know the current trends in your target industry and the growth potential. These details also prove to investors that you’re very familiar with the industry.

For this section, the listed target market paints a picture of what your ideal customer looks like. Data to include may be the age range, gender, income levels, location, marital status and geographical regions of target consumers.

A SWOT analysis is a common tool entrepreneurs use to bring all collected data together in a market analysis. “SWOT” stands for “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.” Strengths and weaknesses analyze the advantages and disadvantages unique to your company, while opportunities and threats analyze the current market risks and rewards.

5. Management team 

Before anyone invests in your business, they’ll want a complete understanding of the potential investment. This section should illustrate how your business is organized. It should list key members of the management team, the founders/owners, board members, advisors and more.

As you list each individual, provide a summary of their experience and their role within your company. Treat this section as a series of mini resumes and consider adding full-length resumes to the appendix of your business plan.

6. Financial plan 

The financial plan should include a detailed overview of your finances. At the very least, you should include cash flow statements and profit and loss projections over the next three to five years. You can also include historical financial data from the past few years, your sales forecast and balance sheet. Consider these items to include:

• Income statement: Investors want detailed information to confirm the viability of your business idea. Expect to provide an income statement for the business plan that includes a complete snapshot of your business. The income statement will list revenue, expenses and profits. Income statements are generated monthly for startups and quarterly for established businesses.
• Cash flow projection: Another element of your financial plan is your projection for cash flow. In this section, you estimate the expected amount of money coming in and going out of your business. There are two benefits to including a cash flow projection. The first is that this forecast demonstrates whether your business is a high-risk or low-risk venture. The second benefit of doing a cash flow projection is that it shows you whether you would benefit most from short-term or long-term financing.
• Analysis of break-even point: Your financial plan should include a break-even analysis. The break-even point is the point at which your company’s sales totals cover all of its expenses. Investors want to see your revenue requirements to assess whether your business is capable of reaching the financial milestones you’ve laid out in your business plan.

Make sure this section is precise and accurate. It’s often best to create this section with a professional accountant. If you’re seeking outside funding for your business , highlight why you’re seeking financing, how you will use that money and when investors can expect a return on investment .

If you want to master your financial plan, Jennifer Spaziano, vice president of business development at ACCION, offers these helpful tips:

• Follow generally accepted accounting principles : As a rule, the financial part of your plan should follow the accounting principles set by the Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board, especially if you’re creating the plan to obtain a loan or a line of credit.
• Get fluent in spreadsheets: Spreadsheets are the best and most accepted way to present financial information.
• Seek outside assistance: Obtaining advice from your financial planner or accountant can help you put the numbers together and present them properly. If you use an accountant and your financial statements have been audited, state that in the plan.
• Look up templates: If you want to attempt writing the financial section on your own, there are resources. 

7. Operational plan

The operational plan section details the physical needs of your business. This section discusses the location of the business , as well as required equipment or critical facilities needed to make your products. Some companies ― depending on their business type ― may also need to detail their inventory needs, including information about suppliers. For manufacturing companies, all processing details are spelled out in the operational plan section.

For startups, you want to divide the operational plan into two distinct phases: the developmental plan and the production plan: 

• Developmental plan: The developmental plan details each step in the process of bringing your product or service to market. You want to outline the risks and the protocols you’re taking to demonstrate to investors that you’ve examined all potential liabilities and that your business is well-positioned for success. For instance, if workers (or your products) are exposed to toxic materials during the production process, in your developmental plan, you want to list the safety measures you will follow to minimize the risk of illness and injury to workers and consumers and how you plan to minimize any potential culpability to your business.
• Production plan: The production plan includes the day-to-day operation information, such as your business hours, the work site(s), company assets, equipment pieces, raw materials and any special requirements.

8. Appendices

The appendices will contain all the extra information that is not immediately necessary to the business plan but helpful to have. Resumes of the management team usually are provided here as well as long-term financial projections. This section can be as long or short as you want it to be. Most business plans will have something in the appendix, which is referred to in the main section of the business plan.

What are the challenges of writing a business plan?

The challenges of writing a business plan vary. Do you have all the information about your business that you need? Does your industry have strict guidelines that you must adhere to? 

Writing a business plan will prompt you to evolve your business idea into a blueprint that you can follow. Challenges will come if you have not fully considered all the aspects of a business idea, such as the location to sell your product or the marketing you will do to help bring in business. Writing a good business plan will have you thinking about the “what if” to your business and allow you to come up with strong answers to address those questions.

However, certain challenges may prove more difficult to answer than others. If you aren’t familiar with certain terminologies or have trouble using spreadsheet processing software, you might have difficulty answering cash flow or financial projections. Especially if you have a new product or service to address a problem in the market, you might have no clear road map on how to market this new product which has never been thought of before.

To help you prepare, we identified 10 of the most common issues you may face:

• Getting started
• Identifying cash flow and financial projections
• Knowing your target market
• Being concise
• Making it interesting
• Establishing workable goals
• Being realistic about business growth
• Proving that your idea is worth the risk
• Finding the right amount of flexibility
• Creating a strategy that you can implement

Crafting a business plan around these 10 challenges can prepare your business ― and anyone who joins it ― for a prosperous future.

How do you overcome the challenges of writing a business plan?

Although you won’t predict everything for your business accurately, you can take preemptive steps to reduce the number of complications that may arise. For example, familiarize yourself with the business plan process by researching business plans and identifying how others executed their plans successfully.

You can use these plans as a basis. However, Rick Cottrell, CEO of Tesseon, recommends taking it one step further: Talk to small business owners and others who have experience.

“The business owner should talk to an accountant, banker and those who deal with these plans on a daily basis and learn how others have done it,” Cottrell said. “They can join startup and investment groups and speak to peers and others who are getting ready to launch a business and gain insights from them. They can seek out capital innovation clubs in their area and get additional expertise.”

If you research how to write a business plan and still don’t feel comfortable writing one, you can always hire a consultant to help you with the process. Guidance is crucial when you don’t know what you don’t know. There are freelancers who will write business plans for you for a small fee which can be a good stepping stone to something more concrete.

“It is simply a time-consuming process that cannot be rushed,” Cottrell added. “Millions of dollars can be at stake and, in many cases, requires a high level of expertise that either needs to be learned or executed in conjunction with an experienced business consultant.” 

Should I use free or paid business plan templates?

You have the option of choosing between free and paid business templates. Both come with their own benefits and limitations, so the best one for you will depend on your specific needs and budget. Evaluating the pros and cons of each can help you decide.

Free templates

The biggest advantage of using a free template is the cost savings it offers to your business. Startups are often strapped for cash, making it a desirable choice for new business owners to access a free template. Although it’s nice to use templates at no cost, there are some drawbacks to free business plan templates ― the biggest one being limited customizability.

“The process of writing a business plan lets you personally find the kinks in your business and work them out,” Attiyya Atkins, founder of A+ Editing, told Business News Daily. “Starting with an online template is a good start, but it needs to be reviewed and targeted to your market. Downloadable business plans may have dated market prices, making the budget inaccurate. If you’re looking to get money from investors, you need a customized business plan with zero errors.” 

Janil Jean, head of overseas operations at LogoDesign.net, agreed that free templates offer limited customization, such as the company name and some text. She added that they are often used by a ton of people, so if you use one to secure funds, investors might be tired of seeing that business plan format.

Paid templates

The benefit of paying for business plan templates ― or paying for an expert to review your business plan ― is the accuracy of information and high customization.

“Your audience gets thousands of applications per day. What’s to make your business plan stand out from the crowd when you’re not there in the room when they make the decisions about your enterprise?” Jean said. “Visuals are the best way to impress and get attention. It makes sense to get paid templates that allow you maximum customization through design, images and branding.”

On the contrary, the limitation to using a paid template is the cost. If your startup doesn’t have the funds to pay for a business plan template, it may not be a feasible option.

What is the best business plan software?

If you decide to invest in your business plan, there are several great software programs available. Software takes the legwork out of writing a business plan by simplifying the process and eliminating the need to start from scratch. They often include features like step-by-step wizards, templates, financial projection tools, charts and graphs, third-party application integrations, collaboration tools and video tutorials.

After researching and evaluating dozens of business plan software providers, we narrowed down these four of the best options available:

LivePlan is a cloud-hosted software application that provides many tools to create your business plan, including more than 500 templates, a one-page pitch builder, automatic financial statements, full financial forecasting , industry benchmark data and key performance indicators . Monthly plans start at $10 per month.

Bizplan is cloud-hosted software that features a step-by-step builder to walk you through each section of the business plan. Monthly plans start at $29 per month with annual plans starting at $20.75.

GoSmallBiz is a cloud-based service that offers industry-specific templates, a step-by-step wizard that makes creating a detailed business plan easy and video tutorials. Monthly plans start at $409 per month.

Enloop focuses on financial projections. It provides you with everything you need to demonstrate how financially viable your business can be and walks you through the process of generating financial forecasts. Annual plans start at $11 per month.

Free downloadable business plan template

Business News Daily put together a simple but high-value business plan template to help you create a business plan. The template is completely customizable and can be used to attract investors, secure board members and narrow the scope of your company.

Business plans can be overwhelming to new entrepreneurs, but our template makes it easy to provide all of the details required by financial institutions and private investors. The template has eight main sections, with subsections for each topic. For easy navigation, a table of contents is provided with the template. As you customize each section, you’ll receive tips on how to correctly write the required details.

Planning for your business is the first step of the journey

A business plan is a blueprint for your business idea, which means you will need to add the details to your business plan until you believe it is ready to be acted upon. You may not have all the details to start, but it is important to have enough confidence in starting your business and having a guide to follow as others get involved in your business when you are growing.

Thinking about what problem your business solves, who your suppliers are and what color schemes may be fixed or adjusted over time, but it is important to not only consider those at the beginning but throughout the time you are following your business plan. Once you have your plan in place, you can act on it knowing that you and others can follow that plan. The hardest thing is starting a business plan so start today.

Tejas Vemparala and Sean Peek also contributed to this article. Source interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article.

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Solving Business Challenges: How to Identify and Address Your Company’s Problems

It was all fun and excitement when you first created your business, but at some point, things got a bit sidetracked, and now problems are piling up! Whether it’s a drop in sales, an issue with product quality, or something else entirely, business challenges are inevitable. 

All businesses have their own unique set of challenges that they must face. It’s how you identify and address those problems that determine your company’s success. In this blog post, we will discuss the steps you need to take to identify the challenges your business is facing and how to solve them. 

Let’s get started to get your company back on track!

To those obstacles that your face while managing a booming business, we like to call them challenges rather than problems. A problem is a situation or concern that needs to be rectified whereas a challenge is an opportunity for business growth. 

If you’re not careful, business challenges can quickly turn into business problems. That’s why it’s important to nip them in the bud as soon as possible! These business challenges come in all shapes and sizes and how you will deal with them depends on the size of your company, your industry, and a variety of other factors. 

Let’s dive into the topic!

Why Solving Business Challenges? 

We all would want our businesses to run smoothly, too bad this is real life and business challenges come up all the time, and it is our job as business owners and managers to face them head-on. 

There are many reasons why you should take the time to solve business challenges: 

• To improve efficiency and productivity
• To increase sales and revenue
• To reduce costs
• To improve customer satisfaction

Ensuring the longevity of your business should be one of your top priorities. As a business owner, you have to continuously adapt yourself to the ever-changing business landscape to stay ahead of the competition. If you’re not careful, your business will become stagnant and eventually fail. 

Solving business challenges is essential for business growth. It allows you to identify areas that need improvement and take steps to improve them. Additionally, solving business challenges gives you a chance to show your employees that you’re committed to making the company better. This can boost morale and encourage them to work harder. 

Now that we’ve discussed the importance of solving business challenges, let’s take a look at how you can identify them. 

Business Challenge Assessment (BCA): The Pathway to Success

First of all, how can you solve a challenge you haven’t identified? For this, we bring you the “ Business Challenge Assessment ” a.k.a the BCA! 

The BCA is a business management process you can use to identify business challenges and opportunities for further improvement. It is based on the premise that all businesses have challenges, and that by identifying and addressing those challenges, businesses can improve their performance. 

The BCA process begins with a SWOT analysis, which is a tool used to identify the s trengths, w eaknesses, o pportunities, and t hreats of a business. Once the SWOT analysis is complete, you can move on to identifying the business challenges that need to be addressed. 

There are four steps in the BCA process: 

• Step One: Conduct a SWOT Analysis – Solve business challenges by first identifying them! Use a SWOT analysis to take a close look at the state of your business.
• Step Two: Identifying Business Challenges – Once you have conducted a SWOT analysis, you will have a good idea of the business challenges that need to be addressed.
• Step Three: Prioritize the Business Challenges – In this step, you will prioritize the business challenges based on their importance and urgency.
• Step Four: Develop a Plan to Address the Business Challenges – The final step is to develop a plan of action to address the business challenges. This may include changes to business processes, organizational structures, or even business strategies.

Now that you know the steps involved in conducting a BCA, let’s take a closer look at each step! 

Conducting a SWOT Analysis

The first step in the BCA process is to conduct a SWOT analysis. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This analysis will give you a good overview of the state of your business and where it needs improvement. 

To conduct a SWOT analysis, you will need to gather data from various sources such as financial statements, customer surveys, employees, etc. Once you’ve completed your analysis, you’ll have a good understanding of your business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. But what do you do with this information? How can you use it to better your business?

There are a few different ways you can use SWOT analysis results to overcome business challenges! Let’s move on to the next step!

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Identifying Business Challenges

This step can be difficult, as business challenges can often be disguised as other problems. For example, a drop in sales might seem like an issue with your product or marketing strategy. However, it could also be a sign that your target market has changed and you need to adjust your offerings accordingly. 

But, as well you can use the information to identify new opportunities for business growth. For example, if you find that your business has a lot of untapped potential in the digital sphere, you could develop a plan for expanding your online presence. 

If your business is running well, you can use the information to help you anticipate and avoid potential threats to your business

These challenges may be related to marketing, sales, operations, finance, or any other area of business. According to SEMRush, 66% of small businesses report having financial difficulties, with 43% saying that paying operating costs is the biggest problem. Operating costs include the price of labor, employee benefits, insurance, required tools, etc.

Some other common business challenges include: 

• Declining sales 
• Changing customer needs 
• New competition 
• Poor business processes 
• Inefficient use of resources 
• Poor customer service
• High employee turnover
• Poor financial management

Take into account that you are not in this by yourself! Just check out the 35 biggest challenges growing businesses face here !

Once you have identified the business challenges, it’s time to prioritize them. This is important because not all business challenges are created equal! Some may be more urgent than others, and some may be more important to the overall success of your business. 

Prioritize Business Challenges

In this step, you prioritize the business challenges based on their importance and urgency. This will help you determine which business challenges need to be addressed first and which can wait. 

To prioritize the business challenges, you will need to consider factors such as the impact of the challenge on business performance, the resources required to address the challenge, and the timeline for addressing the challenge. 

Some business challenges will have a greater impact on business performance than others. For example, a decline in sales will hinder business performance a lot more than poor customer service. 

Some common solutions to business challenges include: 

• Improved training for employees
• Changes to business processes
• Implementation of new technologies
• Improve delegation of tasks and responsibilities
• The hiring of new staff
• Changes to marketing or sales strategies
• Improved financial management

Once you have prioritized the business challenges, it’s time to start developing solutions! 

Developing a Plan to Address Business Challenges 

The final step in the BCA process is to develop a plan of action to address the business challenges. This may include changes to business processes, organizational structures, or even business strategies. 

The goal here is to create a roadmap for addressing the business challenges, and should be achievable within a reasonable timeframe. This roadmap should be tailored to your specific business and situation. It should also be flexible enough to adapt as your business evolves and new challenges arise. 

It’s important to involve all relevant stakeholders in the development of the plan so that everyone is on board with the proposed changes

Once you have developed a plan to address the business challenges, it’s time to implement it! This is where the rubber meets the road. Implementation will require hard work, dedication, and commitment from everyone involved. 

But, if you stick to it, you’ll be able to overcome any business challenge that comes your way! 

Track Progress

However, simply finding a solution is not enough. You also need to track the progress of your solutions to ensure that they are working as intended.

There are many ways to track the progress of your business challenge solutions. First, you can keep a close eye on your bottom line. If you see an improvement in your financial results, then you know that your solutions are having a positive impact!

You can also track customer feedback. If you see an increase in customer satisfaction or sales, then again, this is a good sign that your solutions are working well. Finally, you can ask employees for their input . If they feel that they can work more efficiently or have less stress, then this is another indication that your solutions are on the right track. 

Consider purchasing a subscription for monitoring tracking software like Monitask !

And that’s it, ta-da! You have now successfully completed the business challenge analysis process. This framework can be used to address any business challenge, big or small. So, what are you waiting for? Get out there and start solving those business challenges! 

We hope this guide has helped solve business challenges. If you have any questions or need assistance, please feel free to contact us. We would be more than happy to help!

Best Practices to Avoid Business Shut Down

We know is a difficult time for business owners across the globe. With the COVID-19 pandemic aftermath, many companies have been forced to shutter their doors. This is an unprecedented event that has caught us all off guard. 

Yet, we cannot blame everything on COVID-19. According to CB Insights , a lack of successful product/market fit results in 42% of new businesses failing, resulting in nobody wanting to purchase what the business is offering.

All business owners need to take a step back and analyze their businesses. They need to understand what is working, and more importantly, what is not working. Therefore, you are the only one that can make the necessary changes to avoid a business shutdown. 

See below some key stances for your business boom!

• First and foremost, it’s important to have a solid business continuity plan in place . This plan should outline how you will keep your business running in the event of an emergency. It should cover everything from how you will communicate with employees to how you will maintain operations. 
• Second, you need to make sure that your finances are in order . This means having enough cash on hand to cover expenses, especially important if your business is impacted by the current pandemic. Many businesses are struggling to make ends meet, so it’s crucial to be as financially prepared as possible.
• Finally, you need to have a clear understanding of your business model and how it will generate revenue. This includes identifying your target market and understanding your pricing strategy.

We know is a lot to take in, we know. But, if you can focus on these three key areas, you will be well on your way to business success!

There you have it! A simple guide on how to identify and address business challenges. Just remember to conduct a SWOT analysis, identify the business challenges, and prioritize them based on their importance and urgency. And you’ll be well on your way to overcome any business challenge that comes your way!

By following these steps, you can identify and address the business challenges that are holding your company back from success! Remember that the key to business success is never to give up! If you keep pushing through the challenges, eventually you will come out on top.

We wish you all the best of luck in your business endeavors! Still, feeling stuck? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Check out our blog post on project management, productivity, and employee engagement.

-The Monitask Team

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5 tips for business challenges from MIT Sloan Management Review

Brian Eastwood

Oct 27, 2020

As executives continue to respond to the business challenges posed by COVID-19, they must address the parallel needs to remain resilient amid the pandemic while continuing to plan for the future.

These recent insights from MIT Sloan Management Review will help executives effectively lead amid the chaos, prepare supply chains for the road ahead, and plan for investments in enterprise architecture, digital ecosystems, and artificial intelligence.

The Overlooked Key to Leading Through Chaos

Today’s businesses face ever-increasing rates of change in technology, consumer behavior, and economic uncertainty. That makes it even more critical for leadership to embrace sensemaking as a way to thoroughly understand complex circumstances in order to take the best action.

Many of the hallmark traits of sensemaking — including curiosity, creativity, and engaging diverse viewpoints — are often undervalued among leaders as well as hiring managers. This can leave executives and their teams poorly equipped for nimble decision-making when leading through chaos, MIT Sloan professor Deborah Ancona writes.

To shift gears, firms can embed sensemaking into organizational structure through a three-step process.

• Learn. Pull together relevant stakeholders to seek new ideas, perspectives, and practices. Get out of the office if necessary. Pixar sent the Finding Nemo team scuba diving to see tropical fish in their natural environment.
• Map. Create a report, image, or product mock-up to capture what was learned. Be sure to note any assumptions that changed over the course of data collection.
• Experiment. Try out solutions, update the map, and adopt new approaches. Sensemaking should be a call to action, the authors note, and not an end in itself.

Data, Not Digitalization, Transforms the Post-Pandemic Supply Chain

Organizations made considerable investments in recent years to digitalize supply chain management. Then, to paraphrase boxer Mike Tyson, they got punched in the mouth by COVID-19.

According to MIT Sloan researcher Michael Schrage, these organizations learned the hard way that data drives successful supply chain transformation, not just digitalization. Supply chain leaders needed data they hadn’t accessed before, lacked the tools to gain actionable insight, and had focused on internal metrics that didn’t account for downstream assessment needs such as worker safety or supplier viability.

For supply chain leaders hoping to turn COVID-19 disruption into an opportunity for transformation, Schrage recommends asking the following five questions.

• Does data governance make data more accessible throughout the enterprise, or does it replace legacy inefficiencies?
• How are you measuring operational visibility, how clean and accessible is this data, and how can supply chain managers get whatever data is missing?
• Does your level of transparency into supply chain performance meet customers’ expectations given current circumstances?
• How do you encourage visibility, especially with key suppliers outside the organization, and leverage visibility in order to build trust?
• How will a commitment to visibility and transparency align with the adoption of automation?

Why You — Yes, You — Need Enterprise Architecture

Many businesses were designed around product verticals that are independent of the rest of the organization. This can lead to scenarios where each product comes with its own payment processing system, when in reality a single team could design a single system for all products.

Breaking down these silos means evolving into a digital company to embrace enterprise architecture, writes MIT Sloan researcher Jeanne Ross. This is an evolutionary process, not a rip-and-replace solution, and it consists of three main principles.

• Break processes and products into reusable components. This helps organizations use data more effectively and respond to business opportunities faster.
• Empower cross-functional teams. Instead of managing people, processes, and technology separately, shift the model so that employees are responsible for the processes and technologies for each component.
• Let components influence strategy. As teams develop components, they will learn what customers want and what technology can do. This enables strategy to become a bottom-up exercise.

Ross cites the example of used car retailer CarMax , which has 30 teams building the components of its in-person, at-home, and online business channels. Teams regularly share their findings, which leadership uses to refine strategic planning. This flexibility enabled the company to roll out a contactless, curbside buying experience in response to COVID-19 in just two weeks.

Driving Growth in Digital Ecosystems

In today’s economy, enterprises are more likely to achieve greater revenue growth and profit margins when they can create “one-stop shopping” destinations for their customers, according to survey data from MIT Sloan researchers Ina M. Sebastian, Stephanie L. Woerner, and Peter Weill. This is especially true in the manufacturing, services, and retail/hospitality industries.

Driving growth in digital ecosystems doesn’t happen overnight, but there are six key characteristics of the companies that get it right.

• Distinction . Whether it’s a trusted brand, a lower price point, or an excellent customer experience, a successful digital ecosystem should stand out.
• Organization . Companies and their partners must reorganize at least part of their operating models to support a digital ecosystem. The next steps: eliminate silos, embrace agility, and leverage data.
• Openness . In both B2B and B2C platforms, building connections using APIs makes it easier to share core capabilities and, as a result, scale digital partnerships.
• Joint goals. All participants in a digital ecosystem should agree on a shared vision for value creation, service offerings, and data governance.
• Shared benefits. An ecosystem supports all participants through benefits such as revenue, engagement, visibility, a broader customer base, and complementary product offerings.
• Information guidelines. Data is valuable currency in a digital ecosystem. Companies need to set clear guidelines about what information is shared, and how.

Redefining AI Leadership in the C-Suite

Technology executives often take the lead on artificial intelligence initiatives, but MIT fellow Thomas H. Davenport argues that the CFO can have a significant impact on AI strategy and adoption. There are two key reasons that forward-thinking companies are redefining AI leadership in the C-Suite to give CFOs more of a say.

First, AI can perform many finance functions, including reporting, invoicing, auditing, procurement, and even forecasting. AI is poised to replace outsourcing as a way to achieve productivity. It is also helping organizations adapt to the COVID-19 economy by developing models that better predict product demand or minimize cash outflows. The CFO can emerge as an advocate for AI — and set an example for others in the C-suite — by establishing an education initiative, creating hybrid roles for AI and finance, or creating an AI center of excellence. 

Second, businesses are making significant investments in AI, and they typically realize a return on that investment in less than two years. Here, the CFO can take on a role similar to a venture capital partner by reviewing proposals, moving systems into deployment, assessing value after implementation, and otherwise removing obstacles to success. This can include becoming an executive sponsor for certain projects that are relevant to the finance function or need a push to achieve high ROI.

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The Biggest Challenges Entrepreneurs Face When Starting a Business — and How to Overcome Them

The most common challenges entrepreneurs can expect to face when starting a business.

Starting a business is an exciting undertaking: you get to be your own boss, shape your team, and be responsible for bringing your vision to life. But as any seasoned entrepreneur will tell you, the path to success comes with its fair share of obstacles. From learning curves to financial hurdles, understanding the challenges that lie ahead can help ensure that you have the right mindset and strategies in place to overcome them.

In this post, we break down the most common issues entrepreneurs can expect to face when starting a business, and offer valuable tips from our experts on how to make those first steps easier.

1. Insufficient Business Planning

Starting a business without adequate planning is like setting off on a road trip without a map or GPS: you might have a general sense of the direction you’re headed in, but without a clear route, you’re likely to get lost along the way. Many first-time entrepreneurs underestimate the significance of planning, but having a proper business plan and doing your market research can help guide you to success.

Why Have a Business Plan?

“When you’re building a business, there are lots of opportunities that are before you. But chasing all those opportunities at the same time, when there’s only so much bandwidth to go around, produces diminishing results,” says Christian Dawson, Open Eye’s Co-founder and Executive Partner. “If you chase two rabbits, you catch none. What a business plan gives you is the opportunity to figure out which rabbit you’re going to chase.”

A good business plan should:

• Articulate the company’s mission statement to ensure that all strategies, goals, and actions align with the overarching vision.
• Include a SWOT analysis that identifies the business’s strengths, weaknesses, future opportunities, and potential threats.
• Feature a competitor analysis that provides insights on how to refine your strategies, find your unique selling points, and seize opportunities in the market.
• Have a plan for the business’s growth that can be adapted over time.

What About Market Research?

Focusing too much on the big idea can overshadow the importance of market research, leading to costly mistakes down the line. Understanding your target audience, the demand for your product or service, and potential geographical challenges, will position you for growth and help you make better informed business decisions.

2. Ineffective Marketing

Even the most innovative products or services can falter without good marketing, resulting in wasted resources, slower growth, and missed opportunities. That’s why it’s important to build a comprehensive marketing strategy that considers your target audience, competition, and the channels to reach potential customers.

“The most successful marketing campaigns really take into account the mission and the values of an organization,” says Dawson. “They should consider the specific problems that the group is trying to solve with their business plan, and show that they have a full understanding of the people that they are trying to target.”

3. Founder Knowledge and Skills Gaps

Being a business owner is a steep learning curve, and it’s not uncommon for founders to encounter questions they don’t have the answers to, or discover skill sets they need to develop. To bridge these knowledge gaps, founders should:

• Commit to ongoing learning by reading industry-related books, taking online courses, attending workshops or participating in webinars.
• Keep up with industry news and trends by subscribing to relevant publications, newsletters, and podcasts.
• Consider finding a mentor—either through mentorship programs, business associations, or by reaching out to people in your network—with expertise in areas where you lack knowledge or skills.
• If your budget allows, hire a consultant that can provide specialized guidance on specific challenges or projects.

4. Founder Well-being

Entrepreneurship can take a toll on a founder’s well-being—especially during the first year. The weight of new responsibilities, coupled with the uncertainty of the future, can often lead to self-doubt, isolation, and mental, physical, and emotional exhaustion. But your company can’t be at its best if you’re not at yours, so looking after your health isn’t just important, it’s essential.

“Hustle culture tries to squeeze as much as possible out of individuals in ways that aren’t sustainable,” says Dawson. “The most successful companies that we work with are ones that really do try to create a healthy working environment.”

To prevent burnout and reduce stress, make sure to keep active, eat well, manage your time efficiently, and prioritize work/life balance.

5. Poor Financial Management

Cash flow problems, failure to accurately forecast sales, and overspending can be detrimental for a new company, so entrepreneurs should prioritize financial literacy or enlist the help of a financial advisor.

Dawson recommends outlining metrics for success directly in your business plan, so you can track and manage expenses in a way that gives real visibility into the cost of goods sold. It’s also important to regularly monitor your financial health and, when possible, set aside funds for unexpected expenses.

6. Inadequate Funding Source

Securing money from investors or obtaining debt financing can be difficult, especially for first-time entrepreneurs. But strong financial management and strategic fundraising efforts can mitigate these challenges.

Make sure to explore various funding options, including crowdfunding or sourcing loans from angel investors or venture capitalists. Demonstrating clear value and growth potential to possible investors can increase your chances of securing external funding.

Revenue shortfalls are also common in the early stages of a business and can hinder growth. To prevent this, entrepreneurs should focus on creating a detailed financial plan that accounts for all potential expenses and revenue streams.

7. Human Resources

In the early stages of starting a business, some entrepreneurs struggle with delegating responsibilities as they transition into a leadership role, but it’s important to recognize that you can’t do everything on your own. Having a strong team behind you ensures that you can focus on the big picture without having to worry so much about the day-to-day operations.

Be sure to invest time into developing a recruitment and hiring strategy that identifies candidates who align with the company’s vision and culture. “To build a great team, you should really be articulating what kind of person will thrive in your environment,” says Dawson. “Someone may be an awesome person, but not the right fit for your team, and that’s okay.”

While starting a business can feel overwhelming at times, preparing for the challenges ahead can increase your chances of success and help you navigate the entrepreneurial gauntlet with confidence and resilience.

At Open Eye, we understand the unique challenges entrepreneurs face when starting a business. Oftentimes, startup consulting can help. If you’re looking for personalized guidance, one of our expert partners can help. Contact [email protected] for more information. Contact us here .

• Christian Dawson
• Strategy and Consulting

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Strategic Planning: 5 Common Challenges

by AAL | May 23, 2022 | Featured , SP-1 , Strategy | 0 comments

Strategic planning is a process, an outcome, and—in its best form—a roadmap used by stakeholders throughout an organization to move the organization toward higher levels of achievement. Strategic planning is also a much-maligned endeavor, subject to the usual (and frequent) criticisms: too much time, too much money, and too little action.

Having watched more strategic plans than I can count gather proverbial dust, I’d like to reflect for a moment on our experiences at AAL helping organizations create a strategic plan. There are many reasons such plans fail, but the following five challenges are among the most common:

Lack of leadership. If the leaders of the organization, program, or department do not support the plan, it will fail. This point seems obvious, but far too often leaders talk about the importance of the strategic plan as the planning process gets underway, only to show little interest down the line.

I’m thinking of a senior administrator who appeared exactly three times, for about 15 minutes each time, over a period of one year to express to his strategic planning task force how important their work was to the institution. At virtually every other gathering associated with the process, he sent an emissary to convey the importance of the strategic plan. Do you suppose those task force members viewed the process as extremely important?

How do leaders contribute to the success of the plan? They are present and engaged at the right times with the right people. Most important is their ongoing leadership responsibility: they think strategically. Strategic thinking is guided by vision, mission, and values. Strategic thinking and consequent action aligned with a clear vision of the future are an antidote to the inevitable environmental changes that undermine the details of strategic plans. Strategic thinking is ultimately about staying the course over time, in spite of detours caused by unforeseen circumstances.

Lack of consensus. I have heard more than once that the process of strategic planning is what matters, not the product. Of course, the process itself is vital; yet if an organization is serious about implementing the plan, then an excellent product is imperative.

Strategic planning is about consensus building. Done correctly, the process promotes communication, participation, and collaboration. It provides a structured forum for airing conflicts, dealing with the inevitable political struggles, and negotiating the purpose and meaning of an organization and one’s place in it. While a true consensus about all issues among all stakeholders is unrealistic, engaging everyone through interviews, focus groups, surveys, open forums, and the like is essential if leaders expect them to implement the plan.

Such engagement of others requires time. There are no formulas for the right amount of time. Too much and people lose interest or become mired in details; too little, and they feel unheard. Yet the results of this consensus-building process represent the antithesis of the plan developed by committee or the lone administrator behind closed doors.

Too ambitious. Who can predict what will happen when bright, highly motivated, visionary people are charged to participate in strategic planning? One likely outcome is that from fertile minds will grow a garden of luscious ideas. After all, germinating ideas is a core competency of most professionals.

Tending the garden, however, is an altogether different task. It involves additional human and financial resources, more time and effort, and the willingness to get one’s hands dirty by actually doing something with the idea. Overly ambitious plans tend to outstretch resources and become complicated in the implementation phase. They often have too many goals, including some that are simply unfeasible for the organization in a three-to-five-year window.

The problem of too many goals is exacerbated by implementation planning. I have seen strategies and goals deconstructed into literally hundreds of specific objectives. Even if an organization has full-time staff devoted to strategy and planning, such plans become unwieldy, demoralizing, and ultimately unhelpful as an actionable guide.

Failure to integrate the plan into the culture, operations, and budget. Failures often occur because the strategic plan is divorced from the daily life of an organization. Leaders must model the plan, and that includes talking about it—often. Every public venue and most closed venues are opportunities to stress the vision, mission, and values of the organization.

Integration involves implementing specific, measurable objectives at all levels. Tying decision-making and resource allocation to the plan is vital to making it a part of the institution’s daily life. From the departmental to the institutional level, all defining structures of the organization must be informed by the plan, including budgets, recruitment and development, curricula, and so forth. A fully integrated plan moves everything and everyone (well, most everyone—detractors and cynics reside in all organizations) in the same general direction.

Lack of momentum in the short term. The window of strategic plans continues to get smaller. When strategic planning first emerged as an organizational expectation, a plan spanning 10 years or more was not uncommon. Today, we typically advise our clients to consider a three-to-five-year window.

Even with a shorter time frame, an annual (or sometimes biennial, depending on the environment), systematic assessment of the plan is necessary for course corrections. The planning process itself should create momentum, but as noted above, if the process takes too long, then those involved begin to lose their enthusiasm. Thus the timeline is important; staying with an aggressive timeline sends the message that the planning is a serious endeavor.

Ideally, during the planning process itself, an organization will discover areas for growth and make important changes. To ensure that the strategic plan does not fall stillborn from the printer, institutions should act as quickly as possible. This means identifying those steps that can be taken in the short term and moving forward to implement them. Equally important is making sure that stakeholders know the institution has moved deliberately and decisively to act on the plan. Thus leaders must communicate their actions often and through a variety of media. Momentum in the short term conveys the message that the planning process was a serious undertaking and that the resulting strategic plan is a living document.

Strategic plans need not gather dust on a shelf. They can and should be living documents that guide an organization on a daily basis. In today’s rapidly changing and unpredictable environment, a practicable strategy is more important than ever. Organizations that meet the challenges above have much better outcomes from their strategic plan.

In the end, of the challenges listed above, the first is the greatest: the plan will succeed or fail on the strategic thinking and acting of its leaders.

N. Karl Haden, Ph.D. President of AAL & co-author of The 9 Virtues of Exceptional Leaders and 31 Days with the Virtues

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The 20 Best Business Plan Competitions to Get Funding

Business plan competitions can provide valuable feedback on your business idea or startup business plan template , in addition to providing an opportunity for funding for your business. This article will discuss what business planning competitions are, how to find them, and list the 20 most important business planning competitions.

On This Page:

What is a Business Plan Competition?

How do i find business plan competitions, 20 popular business plan competitions, tips for winning business plan competitions, other helpful business plan articles & templates.

A business plan competition is a contest between startup, early-stage, and/or growing businesses. The goal of the business plan competition is for participants to develop and submit an original idea or complete their existing business plan based on specific guidelines provided by the organization running the contest.

Companies are judged according to set criteria including creativity, feasibility, execution, and the quality of your business plan.

A quick Google search will lead you to several websites that list business planning competitions. 

Each site has a different way of organizing the business planning competitions it lists, so you’ll need to spend some time looking through each website to find opportunities that are relevant for your type of business or industry.

Finish Your Business Plan Today!

Below we’ve highlighted 20 of these popular competitions, the requirements and how to find additional information. The following list is not exhaustive; however, these popular competitions are great places to start if you’re looking for a business competition.

Rice Business Plan Competition

The Rice University Business Plan Competition is designed to help collegiate entrepreneurs by offering a real-world platform on which to present their businesses to investors, receive coaching, network with the entrepreneurial ecosystem, fine-tune their entrepreneurship plan, and learn what it takes to launch a successful business.

Who is Eligible?

Initial eligibility requirements include teams and/or entrepreneurs that:

• are student-driven, student-created and/or student-managed
• include at least two current student founders or management team members, and at least one is a current graduate degree-seeking student
• are from a college or university anywhere in the world
• have not raised more than $250,000 in equity capital
• have not generated revenue of more than $100,000 in any 12-month period
• are seeking funding or capital
• have a potentially viable investment opportunity

You can find additional  eligibility information on their website.

Where is the Competition Held?

The Rice Business Plan Competition is hosted in Houston, TX at Rice University, the Jones Graduate School of Business.

What Can You Win?

In 2021, $1.6 Million in investment, cash prizes, and in-kind prizes was awarded to the teams competing.

This two-part milestone grant funding program and pitch competition is designed to assist students with measurable goals in launching their enterprises.

Teams must be made up of at least one student from an institution of higher education in Utah and fulfill all of the following requirements:

• The founding student must be registered for a minimum of nine (9) credit hours during the semester they are participating. The credit hours must be taken as a matriculated, admitted, and degree-seeking student.
• A representative from your team must engage in each stage of Get Seeded (application process, pre-pitch, and final pitch)
• There are no restrictions regarding other team members; however, we suggest building a balanced team with a strong combination of finance, marketing, engineering, and technology skills.
• The funds awarded must be used to advance the idea.

The business plan competition will be hosted in Salt Lake City, UT at the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute at the University of Utah.

There are two grants opportunities:

• Microgrant up to $500
• Seed Grant for $501 – $1,500

Global Student Entrepreneur Awards

The Global Student Entrepreneur Awards is a worldwide business plan competition for students from all majors. The GSEA aims to empower talented young people from around the world, inspire them to create and shape business ventures, encourage entrepreneurship in higher education, and support the next generation of global leaders.

• You must be enrolled for the current academic year in a university/college as an undergraduate or graduate student at the time of application. Full-time enrollment is not required; part-time enrollment is acceptable.
• You must be the owner, founder, or controlling shareholder of your student business. Each company can be represented by only one owner/co-founder – studentpreneur.
• Your student business must have been in operation for at least six consecutive months prior to the application.
• Your business must have generated US $500 or received US $1000 in investments at the time of application.
• You should not have been one of the final round competitors from any previous year’s competition.
• The age cap for participation is 30 years of age.

You can find additional   eligibility information on their website.

Regional competitions are held in various locations worldwide over several months throughout the school year. The top four teams then compete for cash prizes during finals week at the Goldman Sachs headquarters in New York City.

At the Global Finals, students compete for a total prize package of $50,000 in cash and first place receives $25,000. All travel and lodging expenses are also covered. Second place gets US $10,000, while third place earns US $5,000. Additional prizes are handed out at the Global Finals for Social Impact, Innovation, and Lessons from the Edge.

Finish Your Business Plan in 1 Day!

The collegiate entrepreneurs organization business plan competition.

The Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization Business Plan Competition (COEBPC) exists to help early-stage entrepreneurs develop their business skills, build entrepreneurial networks, and learn more about how they can transform ideas into reality. It also offers cash prizes to reward entrepreneurship, provide an opportunity for recognition of top student entrepreneurs around the world, and provide unique opportunities for networking.

To compete, you must:

• Be a currently enrolled student at an accredited institution
• Have a viable business concept or be the creator of an existing business that generates revenue.

If you are among the top three finalists of the business plan competition and successfully receive prize money, you will be required to submit a class schedule under your name for the current academic semester. Failure to do so will result in the forfeit of the prize money.

All competitions are held online. The finalist will receive a trip to the International Career Development Conference, where they have an opportunity to win additional prizes from CEO’s sponsors.

• First Place – $7,000
• Second Place – $5,000
• Third Place – $3,000
• People’s Choice Award – Collegiate Entrepreneur of the Year – $600

MIT 100k Business Plan Competition and Expo

The MIT 100K was created in 2010 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to foster entrepreneurship and innovation on campus and around the world. Consists of three distinct and increasingly intensive competitions throughout the school year: PITCH, ACCELERATE, and LAUNCH. 

• Submissions may be entered by individuals or teams.
• Each team may enter one idea.
• Each team must have at least one currently registered MIT student; if you are submitting as an individual, you must be a currently registered MIT student.
• Entries must be the original work of entrants.
• Teams must disclose any funding already received at the time of registration.

Hosted in Cambridge, MA at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology beginning in October through May of each academic year.

Top finalists will have a chance to pitch their ideas to a panel of judges at a live event for the chance to win the $5,000 Grand Prize or the $2,000 Audience Choice Award.

20 Finalists are paired with industry-specific business professionals for mentorship and business planning and a $1,000 budget for marketing and/or business development expenses.

The 10 Top Finalists participate in the Showcase and compete for the $10,000 Audience Choice Award while the 3 Top Finalists automatically advance to LAUNCH semi-finals.

The grand prize winner receives a cash prize of $100,000 and the runner-up receives $25,000.

Florida Atlantic University (FAU) Business Plan Competition

The FAU business plan competition is open to all undergraduate and graduate student entrepreneurs. The competition covers topics in the areas of information technology, entrepreneurship, finance, marketing, operations management, etc.

All undergraduate and graduate students are eligible to participate.

The business plan competition will be held at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida.

• First prize: $5,000 cash
• Second prize: $500 cash

Network of International Business Schools (NIBS) Business Plan Competition

The Network of International Business Schools (NIBS) Business Plan Competition is designed to offer an opportunity to develop your business plan with the guidance of industry experts. It provides the opportunity for you to compete against fellow entrepreneurs and explore big ideas.

• Participants must be the legal age to enter into contracts in the country of residence.
• Participants may not be employed by an organization other than their own company or business that they are launching for this competition.
• The plan should be for a new business, not an acquisition of another company.

The Network of International Business Schools (NIBS) Business Plan Competition is held in the USA.

There is a cash prize for first, second, and third place. There is also a potential for a business incubator opportunity, which would provide facilities and assistance to the winners of the competition.

Washington State University Business Plan Competition

The Washington State University Business Plan Competition has been serving students since 1979. The competition is a great opportunity for someone who is looking to get their business off the ground by gaining invaluable knowledge of running a successful business. It offers a wide range of topics and competition styles.

• Any college undergraduate, graduate, or professional degree-seeking student at Washington State University
• The company must be an early-stage venture with less than $250,000 in annual gross sales revenue.

The Washington State University Business Plan Competition is held in the Associated Students Inc. Building on the Washington State University campus which is located in Pullman, Washington.

There are a wide variety of prizes that could be won at the Washington State University Business Plan Competition. This is because the business plan competition has been serving students for over 30 years and as such, they have offered more than one type of competition. The common prize though is $1,000 which is awarded to the winner of each class. There are also awards for those who come in second place, third place, etc.

Milken-Penn GSE Education Business Plan Competition

The Milken-Penn GSE Education Business Plan Competition is one of the most well-known competitions in the country. They have partnered with many prestigious institutions to provide funding, mentorship, and expertise for the competition.

Education ventures with innovative solutions to educational inequity from around the world are encouraged to apply, especially those ventures founded by and serving individuals from marginalized and historically underrepresented communities.

We encourage applicants working in every conceivable educational setting–from early childhood through corporate and adult training. We also welcome both nonprofit and for-profit submissions.

The competition is held at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

All finalists receive $1,000 in cash and $5,000 in Amazon Web Services promotional credits.

Next Founders Business Plan Competition

Next Founders is a competition geared towards innovative startups with a social impact, looking to transform society by addressing key global human needs. The competition inspires and identifies energetic, optimistic entrepreneurs who are committed to achieving their vision.

Next Founders is for Canadian business owners of scalable, high-growth ventures.

Next Founders is held at the University of Toronto.

You could win up to $25,000 CAD in cash funding for your new business.

Hatch Pitch Competition

The Hatch Pitch competition is one of the most prestigious business competitions in the US. The winners of the Hatch Pitch Competition are given access to mentorship courses, discounted office space with all amenities included, incubators for startups, tailored education programs, financial counseling & more.

The competition is for companies with a business idea.

• The company’s product/service must have launched within the past 2 years, or be launched within 6 months after the Hatch Pitch event.
• Founders must retain some portion of ownership in the company.
• Received less than $5 million in funding from 3rd party investors.
• The presenter must actively participate in Hatch Pitch coaching.

The Hatch Pitch Competition is located at the Entrepreneur Space in Dallas.

The grand prize for this business plan competition is access to resources like incubators and mentorships that could prove invaluable in bringing your startup company to the next level.

TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield

The Startup Battlefield is a business plan competition that is sponsored by TechCrunch.  It awards the winner $50,000. There are two different rounds to this competition:

• First Round – 15 companies from all of the applicants that submitted their business plans for this round.
• Second Round – Two finalist companies compete against each other at TechCrunch Disrupt NY’s main stage.

At the time of the application process, companies must have a functional prototype to demo to the selection committee. In selecting final contestants, we will give preference to companies that launch some part of their product or business for the first time to the public and press through our competition. Companies that are in closed beta, private beta, limited release or generally have been flying under the radar are eligible. Hardware companies can have completed crowdfunding but those funds should have been directed to an earlier product prototype. Existing companies launching new feature sets do not qualify.

TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield is held at different locations.

The Startup Battlefield rewards the winner with $50,000. In addition, the two runner-ups get a prize of $5,000 each.

New Venture Challenge

New Venture Challenge is a competition hosted by the University of Chicago. There are 3 main categories that will be judged:

• Innovative Concept – Arguably the most important category, this focuses on uniqueness, originality, and suitability.
• Market Fit/Business Model – Are you solving an actual problem for your target market? Does your project have the potential for profit?
• Presentation – Did you make a compelling, impactful presentation? Did you clearly communicate your goals and vision to potential investors?

You can find  eligibility information on their website.

The New Venture Challenge competition is held in Chicago, IL.

Finalists are awarded:

• First Place: $50,000 equity investment and access to industry mentors and other resources.
• Second place: $25,000 equity investment and access to industry mentors and other resources.
• Third place: $15,000 equity investment and access to industry mentors and other resources.

New Venture Championship

The New Venture Championship is hosted by the University of Oregon and has been since 1987. The championship brings new ventures and innovative business ideas to life and the competition offers plan writing as a service to those who need it.

The University of Oregon New Venture Championship is open to university student teams with 2-5 members that have at least one graduate student involved with their venture. Students should be enrolled in a degree program or have finished their studies in the current academic year.

The New Venture Championship hosted by the University of Oregon is held in Eugene, Oregon.

Every business plan has a chance of winning a cash prize from $3,000 to $25,000 and additional benefits like plan coaching and office space rental.

Climatech & Energy Prize @ MIT

The Climatech & Energy Prize @ MIT is a competition that focuses on companies that are involved in the area of energy, environment, and climate change.

• Participants must be a team of two or more people.
• At least 50% of formal team members identified in the competition submission documentation must be enrolled as half-time or full-time college or university students.

The Climatech & Energy Prize @ MIT is held in Cambridge, MA.

The grand prize winner receives $100,000 and other winners may receive other monetary prizes.

Baylor Business New Venture Competition

This competition has been offered by Baylor for the last 20 years. It is designed to help aspiring entrepreneurs refine business ideas, and also gain valuable insights from judges and other entrepreneurs.

Must be a current undergraduate student at Baylor University or McLennan Community College.

The Baylor Business New Venture competition will be held at the Baylor University, Waco, TX.

The grand prize winner will receive $6,000. There are also other prizes given out to the other finalists in each category which are worth $1,500 – $2,000.

13th IOT/WT Innovation World Cup

The 13th IOT/WT Innovation World Cup was organized by the 13th IOT/WT Innovation World Cup Association. It was organized to provide a platform for innovators from all over the world to showcase their innovative ideas and projects. The competition aimed at drawing the attention of investors, venture capitalists, and potential business partners to meet with representatives from different companies and organizations in order to foster innovation.

The revolutionary Internet of Things and Wearable Technologies solutions from developers, innovative startups, scale-ups, SMEs, and researchers across the world are invited to participate. Eight different categories are available: Industrial, City, Home, Agriculture, Sports, Lifestyle, and Transport.

Only those submissions that have a functional prototype/proof of concept will advance in the competition, mere ideas will not be considered. 

The competition is held in Cleveland, Ohio also an important center for innovation and cutting-edge technology.

Win prizes worth over $500,000, connect with leading tech companies, speed up your development with advice from tech experts, join international conferences as a speaker or exhibitor, and become part of the worldwide IoT/WT Innovation World Cup® network. 

The U.Pitch is a competition that gives you a chance to share your idea and for the community of budding entrepreneurs, startup founders, CEOs, and venture capitalists to invest in your enterprise. It also provides mentoring by experts in the field.

• Currently enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate program
• Applicants may compete with either an idea OR business currently in operation
• Applicants must be 30 years of age or under

The U.Pitch is held in San Francisco, California.

Enter to win a part of the $10,000 prize pool.

At the core of CodeLaunch is an annual seed accelerator competition between individuals and groups who have software technology startup ideas.

If your startup has raised money, your product is stable, you have customers, and revenue, you are probably not a fit for CodeLaunch.

CodeLaunch is based in St. Louis, Missouri. 

The “winner” may be eligible for more seed capital and business services from some additional vendors.

New York StartUP! Business Plan Competition

The New York StartUP! is a competition sponsored by the New York Public Library to help entrepreneurs from around the world to develop their business ideas.

• You must live in Manhattan, The Bronx, or Staten Island
• Your business must be in Manhattan, The Bronx, or Staten Island
• All companies must have a big idea or business model in the startup phase and have earned less than $10,000

The New York StartUP! competition is held in New York, NY.

Two winners are chosen: 

•  Grand Prize – $15,000  
•  Runner-up – $7,500  

First, determine if the competition is worth your time and money to participate.

• What is the prize money?
• Who will be on the judging panel?
• Will there be any costs associated with entering and/or presenting at the competition (e.g., travel and lodging expenses)?

Once you’ve determined the worth of the competition, then shift to focusing on the details of the competition itself.

• What are the rules of the competition?
• Are there any disqualifying factors?
• How will you be judged during the different parts of the competition?

After conducting this research, it’s best to formulate an idea or product that appeals to the judges and is something they can really get behind. Make sure you thoroughly understand the rules and what is expected from your final product. Once you know what is expected from you, you’ll be able to refine and practice your pitch to help you move through the stages of the competition.

These competitions are a fantastic method to get new business owners thinking about business possibilities, writing business plans, and dominating the competition. These contests may assist you in gaining important feedback on your business concept or plan as well as potential monetary prizes to help your business get off the ground.  

How to Finish Your Business Plan in 1 Day!

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With Growthink’s Ultimate Business Plan Template you can finish your plan in just 8 hours or less!

Top 5 Business Challenges in 2024 and How to Overcome Them

See how Quantive can help you achieve more of your strategy.

The business environment has been rapidly changing since the pandemic, as companies have been perpetually uprooted from what they deemed to be the status quo. While many business challenges have posed difficulties for companies over the last few years — with some even facing bankruptcy — business adaptability has been hailed as the new competitive advantage. 

Companies looking to thrive must be aware of current business issues and create flexible goals tailored to ongoing changes. To help business leaders succeed amidst current business problems, this article covers the five most significant business challenges in 2024 and solution-oriented goals you can create to overcome these. 

What are the current business challenges?

While many business challenges have surfaced (or worsened) in 2024, companies should address the following current business issues:

• Creating stability in the age of uncertainty 
• Adapting to the future of work 
• Adopting ESG as part of your business model
• Accelerating digital transformation 
• Cultivating robust agility

Business challenge #1: Creating stability in the age of uncertainty

COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war have disrupted the equilibrium of supply and demand, sending shock waves through the world economy. The compounding effects of these current business problems affected demand, the cost of goods, supply chains, and investment decisions, resulting in a period of inflation — and increasing the likelihood of a recession or stagflation.  

Inflationary pressures 

According to the OECD , year-over-year inflation rose to 9.6% in May 2022, representing the steepest price increase since 1988. This resulted from a combination of inflationary pressures, namely an increase in demand, energy costs, and supply chain disruptions.  

While the pandemic initially decreased demand due to health scares, lockdown measures, and travel restrictions, vaccine rollouts and monetary stimuli policies skyrocketed demand beyond what supply chains could handle. The increased demand, coupled with the effects of the Russia-Ukraine war, has caused the largest increase in energy prices since the 1973 oil crisis, affecting the overall price of commodities. 

In addition, the pandemic caused delays in the production of many goods, which resulted in undiversified supply chains, mass layoffs, trucker shortages, and factory shutdowns that slowed the continuity of supply chains and raised prices for consumers. Combined, these pose one of the biggest challenges for businesses today.

Looming recession or stagflation 

Given these inflationary pressures, experts worry about a looming recession or stagflation as governmental entities step in to correct inflation. 

Central banks have already started implementing contractionary monetary policies to counter the effects of inflation. Yet, achieving the textbook “soft landing” is rare , as restrictive monetary policies can easily lead to a full-blown recession. This can prompt businesses to prioritize cost-effectiveness, resulting in layoffs, decreased profits, reduced cash flow, and limited R&D. 

Stagflation (where a recession sets in before prices have had a chance to decrease) is also a possible business challenge that can result in low growth, high unemployment, and inflated prices. This unfavorable combination can wreak havoc on economies and cause a dilemma for policymakers, as trying to lower inflation may cause further unemployment, while decreasing unemployment can worsen inflation. 

What to do 

Given this period of instability, it’s a good opportunity to readjust your business goals and adapt to economic rifts by, for example, recession-proofing your business . Here are three focus areas for your business goals to navigate this business challenge:  

Ensuring spending visibility 

• Investing in technology and innovation 
• Upskilling existing employees  

Gaining an acute understanding of your organization’s spending can help your business stay afloat. By creating better visibility into your spending, you can get a detailed picture of how, where, and why money circulates throughout your company. Using this knowledge, your organization can: 

• See where money is wasted, allowing you to cut costs and increase your savings 
• Enhance prioritization and resource deployment 
• Understand which activities can be automated 
• Improve and adapt your sourcing strategy 
• Streamline operations 

Investing in technology and innovation  

Technology can reduce business costs via “digital deflation.” As digital products and services are cheaper than offline alternatives, your business can use them to decrease costs and lower consumer prices. Moreover, implementing tech tools that automate repetitive tasks, such as scheduling and billing, can streamline processes and allow employees to focus on more strategic activities. This facilitates more cost-effective business operations and weakens the effect of economic fluctuations on your business, thus reducing its impact as a current business issue. 

“What economists know, but the news reporters generally ignore...is that digital goods and services typically reduce both actual and measured inflation.”  - Forbes

Upskilling existing employees 

As increasing headcount becomes expensive during periods of inflation (and challenging during a recession or stagflation), your organization should set goals around upskilling employees. In addition to mitigating the effects of economic disruptions, upskilling employees can benefit your company in several ways, including: 

• Driving employee engagement and productivity 
• Making your employees and business adaptable  
• Increasing talent retention and acquisition   
• Improving ROI and reducing waste 
• Saving on recruitment costs 

Business challenge #2: Adapting to the future of work

Ever-changing market dynamics placed adaptability at the forefront of strategic business initiatives, resulting in deviations from traditional working models. More and more businesses are now taking part in the gig economy and introducing hybrid work structures — and while these enable flexible operations, they also create a few business challenges. 

Gig economy 

While the gig economy is not a new concept, the pandemic accelerated its adoption rate, with Mastercard revealing that the gig economy will be worth $298B by 2024 — a 122% increase since 2018. The rise in these transitory business relationships can bring about business problems, including: 

• Difficulty setting expectations: Companies and gig workers may be unsure of what they can expect from each other due to ambiguous and undefined contracts or service level agreements 
• Poor communication: Businesses may find it challenging to manage and track communication with gig workers   

Hybrid work 

Contrastingly, hybrid work was primarily unheard of before the pandemic. According to a 2020 Pew Research survey, 20% of employees whose jobs could be done remotely worked from home either all or most of the time pre-pandemic compared to 71% working from home post-pandemic. This rapid switch to hybrid work increased employee engagement and decreased turnover rates — but also propelled current business issues such as: 

• Organizational misalignment: Achieving alignment in a hybrid workforce can be difficult, with remote employees feeling disconnected from the broader company strategy 
• Difficulties establishing connection and culture: In-office employees can easily collaborate, assimilate to the company culture, and build rapport with leadership, while remote workers may feel isolated and detached 
• Trust issues: Hybrid work can foster feelings of mistrust and hostility, where managers don’t trust their remote employees, and in turn, employees resent managers for deeming them incapable in a remote setting  

See more challenges of hybrid work

To work around these current business problems and make the gig economy and hybrid model work for your organization, set goals around: 

• Enriching your tech stack 

Facilitating interpersonal relationships 

• Building trust by setting clear expectations 

Enriching your tech stack  

An upgraded tech toolkit focused on productivity, collaboration, and product management is necessary when working with hybrid, remote, and gig employees. These tools can help you streamline communications, assign tasks, and track progress — making them essential to the effectiveness of your organization. 

A proactive approach to cultivating internal relationships is necessary for building unity amongst hybrid workers. This can involve regular check-in meetings, reiterating organizational goals, creating Slack channels for various hobbies, and establishing shared rituals. While these may not feel the same as in-person interactions, they can strengthen interpersonal connections and boost teamwork. 

Build trust using clear expectations  

A great way to fortify trust and enhance communications with remote and gig employees is to clarify expectations collaboratively. This involves outlining duties, contributions, and means of working (e.g., availability, work-life balance, documentation) to enhance the well-being and efficiency of employees. 

Business challenge #3: Adopting ESG as part of your business model

The younger generations today are known for their purpose-driven, ethical, and community-oriented approach to consumption, careers, and investments. Given the environmental and social impact of current events, newer generations have nurtured a keen interest in Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives, with: 

• 99% of millennial investors interested in sustainable investing  
• 54% of millennials and Gen Z holding ESG investments 
• Gen Z preferring to purchase from — and spend more on — sustainable brands

Therefore, ESG initiatives are becoming a must-have for business longevity. Yet, a key business challenge faced by companies is uncertainty on how to incorporate ESG into their operations. 

Learn more about ESG principles

What to do            

The importance of ESG makes it integral to your business strategy . You can get your company on the right track with ESG — and avoid the business challenges brought on by not doing so — by:  

Using an ESG framework 

• Introducing DE&I initiatives 

Educating employees on ESG 

While adopting ESG can seem complex, using an ESG framework can simplify the process. These frameworks help you structure ESG commitments, ensure consistency across ESG reporting , and meet stakeholder needs. A few popular ESG frameworks your business can use are: 

• The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi): Enables companies to set science-based targets to increase their competitiveness 
• The Future-Fit Business Benchmark (FFBB): Transforms theory on systems science into a set of principles, indicators, and guides for businesses 
• ISO 14001: Highlights organizational requirements for improving environmental management systems and environmental performance 

Introducing DE&I initiatives  

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) is part of the ‘Social’ component of ESG. It involves welcoming a diverse workforce, valuing different identities and perspectives, and ensuring employees can access the same opportunities. Therefore, working towards DE&I goals is crucial to ESG success. As you evaluate your DE&I goals, start by: 

• Auditing the existing DE&I culture in your organization 
• Emphasizing your organization’s dedication to DE&I across the company 
• Tracking DE&I metrics to measure the success of your initiatives
• Ensuring senior leadership is on board with current DE&I initiatives 

Another critical aspect of integrating ESG into your organization is ensuring your employees understand ESG. Therefore, one of your focus areas should be to create training programs that educate employees on the purpose, benefits, and value of ESG. This training program can discuss: 

• Facts about ESG (e.g., statistics on climate change) 
• The current state of ESG in your company 
• The value ESG can bring to your business 
• How your organization will incorporate ESG (e.g., ESG-based investing, DE&I policies) 
• What metrics and tools your organization will use to measure ESG performance 

Business challenge #4: Accelerating digital transformation

A robust digital transformation strategy improves productivity, data-driven insights, decision-making, customer engagement, and revenue. With more and more companies recognizing the value (and necessity) of ongoing digital transformation, global investment in digital transformation is set to double between 2020 and 2024 . 

However, the widespread investment in digitization tools — and the vast amount of data these generate — can give rise to several business challenges, including: 

Data management issues

Companies are now working with large sets of data extracted from diverse sources. These tend to have different formats, purposes, and levels of completeness, making it difficult to identify errors, erase duplicates, and assess the validity of your data. 

Cloud computing limitations

As more industries rely on cloud computing in the wake of the pandemic, a one-size-fits-all, general-purpose cloud service may be insufficient for industries that need to meet specific requirements, regulations, or guidelines.  

Data privacy and cybersecurity 

Hybrid work, digitization, and cloud reliance threaten data security, as employees now use both company and personal devices to manage their work. Consequently, data security is a pertinent business challenge, with cyberattacks such as phishing, ransomware, and cloud vulnerabilities on the rise . 

What to do  

To diminish the adverse effects of digital transformation — and stop it from becoming an ongoing business challenge — you can establish business goals that cover: 

• Data consolidation and observability 
• Shifting to industry cloud 
• Investing in cybersecurity AI 

Data consolidation and data observability 

Given the amount of disjointed data businesses deal with, data consolidation and observability are essential to data management. By consolidating your data and storing it in one place, you can better manage it, reducing operating costs and improving productivity as a result. Once you’ve consolidated your data, data observability is imperative. This involves monitoring and tracking your data to discover issues, remove bottlenecks, and assess overall performance. 

Shifting to industry cloud  

If your business is in a highly regulated industry (e.g., finance, healthcare) or requires specialized needs, you can shift to using the industry cloud (aka vertical cloud). This is a tailored, purpose-built cloud system that you can customize to meet your industry and business needs (e.g., compliance, operatory, security). This way, you can easily accommodate for challenges in business, disruptions, or changes in your industry.  

Investing in cybersecurity AI  

Another one of the current business issue is increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks, which are difficult to anticipate and overcome manually. Targeting these threats requires complex and self-adaptive solutions, such as cybersecurity AI. Cybersecurity AI detects and responds to breaches by analyzing vast amounts of historical data in real-time and pinpointing deviations from the norm. As such, they can be a valuable tool for businesses looking to stay on top of their data threats. 

Business challenge #5: Cultivating robust agility

Agility helps your business stay competitive and buffers against sudden jolts in the environment, and it’s become even more necessary to your organization in 2024 — especially as it increases employee engagement , customer centricity, and operational performance by 30%. Yet, despite 92% of C-level executives believing that agility is vital to organizational success, there is a lack of clarity on how businesses can create an agile working environment, with agility engrained in the company’s culture, employees, and systems. 

There are many ways of cultivating a company that functions on agility. However, the best ways to incorporate agility into the core of your company involve: 

Thinking of your business as an adaptable organism 

Relying on agile goal setting.

The age-old understanding of businesses as machines was born when Henry Ford created the assembly line. While this business paradigm has spread since then, it hinders organizations from becoming agile, as simply placing a machine in a new environment isn’t effective. If taken to the extreme, it can become an outright challenge for businesses.

To create agility, think of your organization as a living organism, where different parts of your business interact with components inside and outside your environment. Introducing this new paradigm requires you to reorient your business’s internal structure by: 

• Moving from complete bureaucracy to structures that empower teams to take accountability, collaborate, and become self-sufficient 
• Encouraging continuous learning cycles and short feedback loops that incorporate experimentation, innovation, and growth 
• Establishing a united purpose and end goal that enables everyone to recognize and seize opportunities 
• Creating a people-centered organization that focuses on collaboration 
• Integrating new technologies to stay competitive and subdue the impact of current business issues 

An agile organization recalibrates goals according to current business problems, keeping the business relevant, timely, and aligned. Use the following tips to create agility across your business goals and overcome incoming business challenges: 

• Create short-term and long-term goals: Your long-term goals act as a North Star, while short-term goals adapt to changes in the market environment and align with your long-term vision 
• Establish measurable goals: Without goal measurability, you don’t know what (or whether) things need to change 
• Schedule regular check-ins with employees: This can cultivate a qualitative and nuanced view of goal progress, goal relevance, existing challenges, and overall alignment 
• Set collaborative team goals: A collaborative goal-setting approach can help you prioritize goals, discover solutions, and accommodate changes at the macro and micro level 
• Choose an agile goal-setting framework: An adaptable goal-setting framework such as objectives and key results (OKRs) can help you create adjustable, measurable, collaborative, and ambitious goals that keep your organization aligned and agile 

Learn how OKRs and agile work together

Staying ahead of current business issues

With a tumultuous business environment and an increasingly competitive market, staying afloat is no longer an option. As a business leader, reorienting your business systems towards adaptability is vital to your success. To overcome today's business challenges, focus on: 

• Upgrading your internal resources, including financial operations, skillsets, and tools 
• Improving communications and relationships with employees 
• Making ESG a non-negotiable aspect of your business strategy 
• Facilitate data management, compliance, and security using specialized tools  
• Incorporating agility across your business 

Quantive empowers modern organizations to turn their ambitions into reality through strategic agility. It's where strategy, teams, and data come together to drive effective decision-making, streamline execution, and maximize performance.     

As your company navigates today’s competitive landscape, you need an Always-On Strategy to continuously bridge the gap between current and desired business outcomes. Quantive brings together the technology, expertise, and passion to transform your strategy and playbooks from a static formulation to a feedback-driven engine for growth.     

Whether you’re a fast-growing scale-up, a mid-market business looking to conquer, or a large enterprise looking for innovation, Quantive keeps you ahead – every step of the way. For more information, visit www.quantive.com .  

Additional resources

How okr and agile work together, what is the modern operating model.

How to Recession-Proof Your Business in 2024

Esg metrics: your guide to common esg metrics, subscribe for our newsletter.

Medical bills are more negotiable than you think

• Some Americans have seen success when negotiating for a lower medical bills.
• Medical billing offices might be willing to offer a discount to collect an immediate payment.
• Healthcare experts shared how one might go about negotiating a medical bill .

For the last two years, Erin Duffy has studied a little-known strategy some people use to save money:  negotiating their medical bills.

Initially, she just had anecdotal evidence of this strategy in action, Duffy, a research scientist at the University of Southern California who specializes in health policy and economics, told Business Insider.

One of her more recent anecdotes came from a colleague who received a medical bill they thought was "wildly high." The person said they called the billing office and were immediately given three options.

Option No. 1 was to apply for financial aid if they were low-income, but they didn't qualify. Option No. 2 was to set up a payment plan , which would spread out the cost over time but not reduce the amount. Option No. 3 was more to their liking: If they paid that day over the phone with a debit or credit card, then they'd get a discount.

"They paid less than half of the original bill amount, just because they were paying right away over the phone," Duffy said, adding that this is sometimes called a "prompt pay."

We want to hear from you. Are you struggling to pay your medical bills and would be comfortable sharing your story with a reporter? Please fill out this form .

While Duffy was intrigued by these stories, she said she found little research on the experiences of people who tried to reduce their medical bills. So, two years ago, she started creating a survey to help fill that void.

Americans are no strangers to negotiation. Every year, people negotiate their salaries and how much they pay for things like cable , internet , cellphone , car insurance , and rent bills. But when it comes to medical bills, many people just accept the cost, despite the fact that Americans collectively have billions of dollars in medical debt and spend more on healthcare than any other developed country.

Duffy's survey through USC, which was published in August, asked more than 1,000 US adults last year whether they'd recently received a "problematic" medical bill that they thought they couldn't afford, was unfairly high, or contained a mistake. The USC survey found that less than two-thirds of people who received a problematic medical bill decided to challenge it.

However, healthcare experts told BI that trying to negotiate medical bills — while far from a guaranteed strategy — is worth a shot.

Among the survey respondents who reached out to a billing office about an unaffordable bill, 49% said they received some form of price relief — including financial aid, bill cancellation, or a price drop. The survey also found that 62% of respondents who contacted the billing office to try to negotiate a lower bill — whether because they couldn't afford or it because they thought the bill was unfairly high — were able to get the cost dropped.

"We don't normally think about medical bills as something that you can negotiate, but it seems that sometimes you can," Duffy said.

To be sure, most people Duffy surveyed didn't have an issue with their bills — and many of those with an issue didn't bother challenging the bills. Therefore, the sample size of people who contacted a billing office and pushed for a lower cost was small: Duffy said much more research is needed before any larger conclusions can be drawn.

However, the survey's findings aligned with what Duffy and other healthcare industry experts have been hearing for years. If you're persistent and a bit lucky, you might be able to negotiate a lower medical bill .

"It's always worth it to ask"

Patricia Kelmar, senior director of healthcare campaigns for the consumer advocacy organization PIRG, regularly hears from Americans about their frustrations with healthcare costs. She said that trying to negotiate a medical bill sometimes pays off.

Related stories

"Based on the dozens of conversations I have with patients who reach out to us with their medical bill problems, I know that negotiating prices works," Kelmar told Business Insider, adding, "People do get discounts just by asking to pay less."

Kelmar recalled an anecdote from a colleague who called a billing office two years ago after they received a medical bill that they thought would be challenging to pay off. The billing office came back with a proposal.

"They said, 'We have a sale today,' and they gave him like 20% off his bill," Kelmar said, which amounted to a couple hundred dollars.

Offering people a discount could sometimes be in the best interest of billing offices. Their objective is to get people to pay their medical bills, but many people — whether it be for financial reasons or otherwise — don't pay them in a timely manner. As of June 2023, about 5% of Americans, about 15 million people, had unpaid medical bills.

"I suspect that billing offices are willing to offer you a discount if you pay on the spot in person or on the phone because it's so hard for them to collect patient payments," Duffy said.

Healthcare centers rely on more predictable insurance payouts, rather than patients' payments, to support their finances. However, some are beginning to demand patients pay in advance before performing certain procedures.

In the years ahead, Kelmar said increasing consolidation in the healthcare sector could reduce the amount of "individual decision-making" in medical billing offices, potentially making them less likely to dole out discounts. But for now, she said encouraging people to try to negotiate their medical bills is still worthwhile.

"Patients should have the confidence to ask for a lower price because we know that some people are getting a lower bill," she said, adding "It's always worth it to ask."

How to negotiate a medical bill

Before anyone tries to negotiate a medical bill, Kelmar said they should do everything they can to ensure it's accurate. This includes asking for itemized bills and appealing denied insurance claims.

"People should realize that AI is doing a lot of the denials and appealing gets human eyeballs on that denial," she said.

Next, Kelmar said people should check if they qualify for financial assistance through a hospital policy or government program like Medicaid.

"That might actually eliminate your bill or give you a big discount," she said.

If this doesn't work, it might be worth trying to ask for a lower cost. Medical bills from healthcare providers tend to include a phone number for the billing office.

"They should just say, 'I can pay this much today or by the end of the month — do you want me to pay that and forgive the rest?'" Kelmar said.

Kelmar said a billing office might be willing to reduce the bill if you put the payment on your credit card that day. She said this option could work for some people, but it's worth being cautious. That's because medical debt is subject to certain consumer protections that could be lost if one pays their medical bill with a credit card.

If negotiating doesn't work, Kelmar said people should ask if they can be put on a payment plan to give them more time to pay their bills, adding that they should push for a low or no-interest plan.

Why some people don't negotiate their medical bills

Duffy and Kelmar have a few theories about why some people don't bother trying to negotiate their medical bills.

First, the US healthcare system is quite complicated, so it can be difficult for many people to understand their medical bills — much less have the confidence to challenge them. Some people might not be aware that challenging their medical bills is something they can even do or do not know how to go about it.

Additionally, negotiating a bill sometimes requires more than a single call — Kelmar said it can be a time-consuming process that requires persistence. Finding the time and energy can be difficult, particularly for people who are still recovering from a medical surgery or treatment.

Lastly, it could come down to one's personality. Duffy said her survey found that people who are more extroverted — according to a standardized personality assessment — were more likely to challenge a problematic medical bill.

Kelmar wishes US healthcare costs were lower so fewer people would be stuck with steep medical bills, but until things change, she recommends people continue to advocate strongly for themselves.

"Be confident in asking for what you need and you may very well see your bill go down," Kelmar said. "This isn't a great system. We need to fix it."

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How to Respond to Shareholder Activism

• Mark DesJardine

Activist shareholders are often seen as villains by managers and boards. Their demands for strategic and organizational shifts—which can feel personal to managers—often challenge the soundness of a company’s strategy. However, leaders who treat activist shareholders solely as a risk or an annoyance are making a mistake. Although they may be aiming to protect their companies, they’re missing out on an opportunity to tap one of the few free resources companies have to bring about value‑creating strategic change and build stronger business models.

To better respond to—and take advantage of—the campaigns of activists, leaders must learn to think the way they do. Most activists tend to follow a predefined process to identify and engage target companies.

This article presents the three main components of the activist playbook—linking performance failures to organizational weaknesses, developing a plan of action, and creating a narrative in support of change—and describes how managers can anticipate and respond to activist campaigns.

Treat it as an opportunity, not a threat.

Idea in Brief

The problem.

Leaders often treat activist shareholders as a key risk factor in running their businesses. In doing so, they miss out on an important opportunity to bring about value-creating strategic change.

The Mindset

To better respond to—and take advantage of—the campaigns of activists, leaders must learn to think the way they do. Most activists tend to follow a predefined process to identify and engage target companies.

The Approach

This article presents the three main components of the activist playbook—linking performance failures to organizational weaknesses, developing a plan of action, and creating a narrative in support of change—and describes how managers can anticipate and respond to activist campaigns.

Activist shareholders are often seen as villains by managers and boards. Their demands for strategic and organizational shifts—which can feel personal to managers—often challenge the soundness of a company’s strategy. In 2023, more than 23% of Russell 3000 companies identified shareholder activism as a key risk factor in their annual reports, up from 21% the previous year.

• MD Mark DesJardine is a CFA Institute chartered financial analyst, a senior fellow at the Wharton School, and an associate professor of business administration at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business.

Partner Center

Protecting your finances from unexpected challenges

Money talks.

LIFE doesn't always go as planned. Unexpected things happen: a broken air conditioner, a leaky roof or a minor car accident — these can occur at any time, often when we least expect them. It's impossible to plan for everything or prevent every mishap, which is perfectly captured by Murphy's Law: "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."

When these situations arise, it becomes our responsibility to be prepared. While we can't predict or guarantee these events will happen, it's wise not to be caught off guard. Think of the spare tire in your car, or the life vest on a plane or boat — you hope you'll never need them, but they're there, just in case. With that in mind, it's always best to be ready for life's surprises. Here are a few tips to help you prepare.

Anticipate and contemplate. Think of the various things and events that can happen: in your life, in your family, with your properties. What you can anticipate and contemplate, you can prepare for. For instance, if you have a car, then it may be possible that your car or some of its parts can have a breakdown anytime, or your roof would be needing a repair.

With you or your family, it could be that one would be in a medical emergency or figure out in an accident. It could also be the case that things may happen with your siblings, parents or relatives that you might need to financially support them. But whatever the case, anyone can reasonably look into the different possibilities that can happen such that those can be determined and mapped out.

Backup. I once had been accidentally bitten by a cat, and not a few times that I figured out in car accidents of which I am thankful for that in all, I came out alive. I am also not unfamiliar with car repairs: once, my air conditioner broke down in the middle of Skyway, and there are times when signal lights would go busted. In all cases, they required a substantial amount of money, of which I am lucky enough to be covered.

In the case of the cat bite, the total bill was P72,000 for the anti-rabies shots — and during that time, I was covered with an HMO, so I did not have to shell out a single centavo. With car accidents, my car was covered with insurance, of which I only have to pay minimally. As for the various repairs needed with my car, our family always has an emergency fund (more than six months' worth of our expenses), so I do not have to scramble looking for cash or go into loans.

There was also a time when my eldest had to be confined for dengue, of which she also was covered by an HMO, so again, our expenses have been minimal, of which we also dipped into our emergency fund for this. Of course, I am covered with life insurance, enough to provide my family with expenses until they are able to recover financially.

These items: emergency funds and insurance are then your back-up funds should these events happen to you or your family, giving you the means to pay for the necessary expenses and thus saving you from stress in finding the money needed.

Backup to the backup. There are 36 letters in the alphabet, and if Plan A does not work, there is always Plan B and Plan C, etc. So with that, backups can also be backed up for extra cushion. For instance, apart from the six-month emergency fund, we have established at least three more months of emergency fund should there be a need to fund a huge financial requirement.

When I quit my day job to focus on my financial planning profession, I am thankful that we have more than enough funds to support us while establishing the business and therefore not compromise our family's needs. Apart from our living expenses, I also have supplemental insurance for our children's education needs from pre-school up until they graduate from college, thereby relieving my wife with the stress of having to work for and fund these.

In sum, financial planning is not only about planning and preparing for your goals but for scenarios and events that may occur and have a negative financial impact on your finances. This would provide you with the necessary safety nets so that you can readily achieve your and your family's dreams stress- and worry-free.

Rienzie P. Biolena is a registered financial planner of RFP Philippines. He is president and chief financial planner of WealthArki and Consultancy, a financial planning firm. Learn more about personal financial planning at the 108th RFP program in October 2024. To inquire, email [email protected] or text to 0917-9689774.

More From Forbes

How to solve three common business development challenges.

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Business development challenges abound in today's incredibly competitive environment, especially for those professionals who may not consider themselves natural rainmakers. We need ways to manage each challenge and maximize the likelihood of success. Below are three common challenges we might face as we implement our business development plans and continue to build our books of business, as well as my thoughts and recommendations on how to solve them.

Challenge: Balancing Time Spent On Business Development And Other Priorities In One's Life

Solution:  The challenge of balancing time is a common one. Balancing your time among competing priorities in life can be overwhelming. The bottom line is this: Time is not the problem. The problem is any number of things that hold people back from realizing their business development potential. Time is not an excuse. The best way to deal with time is by resetting your mind to be consistent with the characteristics of the rainmaker's brain — stay passionate about what it is you do, be committed to the process of rainmaking, and be confident about your abilities. Once you reset your mind, the brain should take on a different perspective on the issue of time and how to balance it. Then, business developers should make sure they are spending whatever time they do have efficiently by focusing on the very best types of leads for their business enterprise. Finally, they need to know how to establish the type of relationships with those leads that will maximize the possibility of converting them into real business, namely unique business relationships (UBRs), which are relationships that are difficult, if not impossible, to replace.

Challenge: Identifying The Next Steps In The Sales Process After Initial Contact With A Prospect, Especially When That Prospect Is Simply Not Responding Or 'Dragging Their Feet'

Solution: Oftentimes we put a lot of work into establishing the initial connection with a prospect. But if there is not an immediate "yes," it is not uncommon for some professionals to become terribly inefficient at handling next steps in the pursuit of success. In my experience, a key reason why people don't respond to additional overtures, or are "dragging their feet," is that whoever those prospects are doing business with has a more unique relationship with them than you do. Thus, you should strive to develop a more unique relationship with the prospect than:

1. Whoever is doing business with the prospect currently

2. Your other competitors for that business

When you try to develop such a UBR, you can come up with all sorts of great ways to take next steps with a prospect. These next steps are compelling because they touch at the heart of what I call a prospect's crux personality — the crux of what makes a person tick and what moves them. Bottom line: the best "next steps list" is driven by the overall effort to develop a UBR with a prospect and tapping into that prospect's crux personality.

Challenge:   Overcoming   Personal Resistance

Solution: The resistance issue is a critical one with which to reckon. Some individuals may not naturally feel they are salespeople, which can make them more internally resistant to developing business. Some people may not have a keen interest in honing their business development skills. Their lack of interest makes them more resistant to the sales process, and in turn, they don't achieve the joy and other rewards that come from business development success. I think resistant individuals can find business development joy by looking inside themselves in connection with their own rainmaking potential. If you understand how you can use your own personal attributes in your business development life, you will feel more comfortable getting out there and developing business. Reset your mind initially by determining to be passionate about what you are doing, determining to be committed to the process of business development and excising barriers to confidence from your mind. Once that is done, you can move on to generating more and better leads and then go about developing UBRs with them into real business. This process can help make the idea of generating business more manageable. You can exponentially increase your success, and ultimately, the whole process will become more fun. Plus, increased business originations typically equate to more dollars in your pocket.

Solving Challenges

Solving business development challenges is easier if you have a method for understanding them and can promptly implement an action plan to maximize success. You can solve the challenges above by integrating the essential aspects of my overall approach to rainmaking: namely, resetting your mind to be consistent with a rainmaker's brain, methodically pursuing strategic leads and developing the very best type of relationship with a prospect — the UBR — which creates the greatest emotional bond with a person, thus massively increasing the likelihood of a prospect doing business with you as opposed to your competitors.

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