ECONOMY AND FINANCE : ALL ABOUT BUSINESS PLAN: HOW YOU GO ABOUT IT?

BY ROBIN GHOSH,

ECONOMIST AND BUSINESS MENTOR.

KOLKATA | 9 MAY 2025

Truly speaking — how do you prepare a business plan?

This is an important question. If you are venturing for a new business or planning to rebuild your existing business, — — you have to structure a business plan.

What components make a business plan?

Seth Godin, in his book “This is Strategy,” writes —  that it can be divided into 6 Sections, and they are:

1Truth

2 Assertions

3 Alternatives

4  People

5  Money

6 Time

Let us take each section and try to understand the inner dynamics of each section.

TRUTH

* The market you plan to enter

* The existing need of the market

* The nature  of competition

* The state of technology

* Stories of success

* Stories of failures

No disagreement. We see the world as it is.

Share the things as they are.

ASSERTIONS

* How you are going to change things

* You will do X and Y will happen

* You will build Z with this much money in this time.

* You will bring Q to the market and the market will respond by taking action.

* Essentially, you are building a scaffold.This is your business model.

*  You have launched this project to change something .

Now assess what you are going to do and what impact it will lead to ALTERNATIVES

* You had asserted many things like sales, costs, margin but  you have missed  what you have .

Now what will your team do? Are they flexible enough to balance the gap?

PEOPLE:

* People are the key. Does your team have the right kind of people with the right kind of skill, attitude, abilities and experience?

MONEY:

* Any project you conceive – it is money + time.

How much funds do you need, how will you use this money? Is your cash flow ok? How will you rate your P&L, balance sheet, how much assets you have acquired and so on?

TIME

Everything is to be judged by the axis of time. Are you on time ? Are you late?

Are you leading or following ?

What we have discussed and narrated probably is not in line with what your venture capitalist or investors want – but it will indeed guide your team members a lot.