The biggest difference between businesses that succeed and businesses that fail is whether or not a business plan was written before the business opened its doors.

The old adage, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail” is true. Writing a business plan not only shows that you have a definate direction for your own business, but it also demonstrates the understanding you have of your particular marketplace and the competition you face in your niche.

A lot of people are confused by what information goes into a business plan as well as how to write one. This Business Plan Checklist produced by The Kauffman Foundation is a good place to start.  Once you understand what should be included in your business plan, you might want to check out Biz Plan Builder by Jian Software.  Biz Plan Builder is an excellent tool for writing your own business plan.  It comes with a large database of sample business plans covering a very wide variety of industries so you have a very easy place to start in writing a plan of your own.  Additionally, each of the sample plans are editable so you can use them as boilerplate for a plan of your own. It comes in editions for both the PC and the Mac and it requires Microsoft office on either platform for editing the plans.