hi I’m Evan Carmichael welcome to
another edition of ask Evan today I’m
going to answer a question from one of
my youtube viewers a mirror who wrote it
asking about business plans so he wrote
saying hi Evan I absolutely love your
videos when creating the business plan
and I’m writing that does it have to be
with all the confusing terms or can it
be in plain English so thanks for the
question Amir first of all of your
business plan you never wanted to be
confusing you don’t want to be confusing
for you you aren’t be confusing for any
of the readers so as much as you can put
it in plain English plain language so
that everybody can understand it
depending what your plan is the for the
business plan is it’s something that
you’re just going to use internally to
help you build your business or if
you’re also going to use it to go and
get investors or that you get a bank
loan it’s gonna be read by other people
then you really have to make sure it’s
in plain English because they’re not
going to know your business as well as
you do so quick example when I was in
the venture capital business I got so
many business plans people wanting to
get funding and a lot of it was not in
plain English it was a very technical a
lot of people with great new
technologies and I’m sure to them when
they read over their business plan it
made a lot of sense like this is what we
do but for somebody who is looking at it
doesn’t know your business it’s a lot of
technical jargon so you want to make
sure that you can you can really put it
in simple terms easy to understand that
anybody can understand a lot of these
bankers investors they may be
knowledgeable but you’re in the stream
but they’re not going to know it as well
as you will know it so it’s really
important to put it in terms that
everybody can understand so for those
ones usually they got rejected sometimes
if we saw something we might you know
bring them in but for the most part it’s
the ones who had the really clear no
simple to understand business plans that
we call them to be able to meet them
because we understood what they do and
they clearly explained their value
proposition so hopefully that helps one
last thing when we look that business
plans there’s a term within the venture
capital industry called the grandmother
test and it basically means is your
business plan written so that your
grandmother can understand it and you
know great task
once you finish your business plan show
it to your grandmother show it to your
friends and family people kind of know
what you do but they don’t know the
specifics and not technical people show
it to them and if they can understand
what the opportunity is and how you
solve a problem and are able to really
help people but they can get that from
your business plan then you’re ready to
start giving it to investors and bankers
if they read it and they have still no
idea what you do then it’s time to go
back to the drawing board and recreate
it especially that executive summary
that first part the executive summary is
really important that’s the first thing
that somebody’s going to read if they
can’t understand the exec summary then
forget it you’re gone usually look at
the exec summary then we look at the
management team and see who’s behind it
and then we look at the financials and
if all that made sense then we start
reading the rest of the business plan so
really make sure that your executive
summary is especially written in plain
English so that helps them here if you
guys like the video for you who are
watching please give it a thumbs up
below it helps you know which readers
you like and which ones you don’t like
as much but I was like making these
videos and appreciate seeing those
thumbs up come in and if you have a
thought about business plans you want to
add something to this video to help a
mere or you have another question for me
feel free to leave it in the comment
section below I always read those so
thank you and we’ll see you on the next
episode
you
another edition of ask Evan today I’m
going to answer a question from one of
my youtube viewers a mirror who wrote it
asking about business plans so he wrote
saying hi Evan I absolutely love your
videos when creating the business plan
and I’m writing that does it have to be
with all the confusing terms or can it
be in plain English so thanks for the
question Amir first of all of your
business plan you never wanted to be
confusing you don’t want to be confusing
for you you aren’t be confusing for any
of the readers so as much as you can put
it in plain English plain language so
that everybody can understand it
depending what your plan is the for the
business plan is it’s something that
you’re just going to use internally to
help you build your business or if
you’re also going to use it to go and
get investors or that you get a bank
loan it’s gonna be read by other people
then you really have to make sure it’s
in plain English because they’re not
going to know your business as well as
you do so quick example when I was in
the venture capital business I got so
many business plans people wanting to
get funding and a lot of it was not in
plain English it was a very technical a
lot of people with great new
technologies and I’m sure to them when
they read over their business plan it
made a lot of sense like this is what we
do but for somebody who is looking at it
doesn’t know your business it’s a lot of
technical jargon so you want to make
sure that you can you can really put it
in simple terms easy to understand that
anybody can understand a lot of these
bankers investors they may be
knowledgeable but you’re in the stream
but they’re not going to know it as well
as you will know it so it’s really
important to put it in terms that
everybody can understand so for those
ones usually they got rejected sometimes
if we saw something we might you know
bring them in but for the most part it’s
the ones who had the really clear no
simple to understand business plans that
we call them to be able to meet them
because we understood what they do and
they clearly explained their value
proposition so hopefully that helps one
last thing when we look that business
plans there’s a term within the venture
capital industry called the grandmother
test and it basically means is your
business plan written so that your
grandmother can understand it and you
know great task
once you finish your business plan show
it to your grandmother show it to your
friends and family people kind of know
what you do but they don’t know the
specifics and not technical people show
it to them and if they can understand
what the opportunity is and how you
solve a problem and are able to really
help people but they can get that from
your business plan then you’re ready to
start giving it to investors and bankers
if they read it and they have still no
idea what you do then it’s time to go
back to the drawing board and recreate
it especially that executive summary
that first part the executive summary is
really important that’s the first thing
that somebody’s going to read if they
can’t understand the exec summary then
forget it you’re gone usually look at
the exec summary then we look at the
management team and see who’s behind it
and then we look at the financials and
if all that made sense then we start
reading the rest of the business plan so
really make sure that your executive
summary is especially written in plain
English so that helps them here if you
guys like the video for you who are
watching please give it a thumbs up
below it helps you know which readers
you like and which ones you don’t like
as much but I was like making these
videos and appreciate seeing those
thumbs up come in and if you have a
thought about business plans you want to
add something to this video to help a
mere or you have another question for me
feel free to leave it in the comment
section below I always read those so
thank you and we’ll see you on the next
episode
you
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