ESYB2 037 - How Long Should a Business Plan Be
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[00:00:00] Now let's discuss your business plan length and style of your writing. Many people think that longer is better, but actually longer is worse because you want to express as much as possible in as concise way as possible and stay clear as well. Bigger is not better. Better is better. The clarity and the strategies is what you should aim for because if your plan is not clearly written, What's the point of writing anything because the reader is not going to understand.

So the way you should write is clear to the point and not much flowery language and not much about your dreams and hopes but really about concrete things. Use short sentences. They really help you to avoid grammar problems and confusion because you don't win that much by having Correct grammar because that's what's expected, but incorrect grammar or incorrect use of complicated terms that you might not understand.[00:01:00] 

They are huge turn offs. They tell people you're a beginner, even if you're not, even if your plan is good. That distracts from the quality of your plan and the reader is like, Oh, and a lot of people ask how many pages should my business plan be? And actually the number of pages usually doesn't matter as long as you get the point across.

So let's talk a little bit about different lengths for different situations. You might be in a lot of times when you just want to introduce the business, you want to have a one page plan. It's a common industry length. Just a one pager talking about your product, your market, your competitors, your team, where you're going with things, your differentiation, and pretty much that's it.

There's no more space in a one page plan, but as long as the reader understands what your product is, how it's different. Then they can create their own informed decision and think for themselves. Is this good? Am I interested? If they're interested, they might ask for a longer one. But nobody reads business plans for fun.

You [00:02:00] want to limit their pain. You want to have your reader be able to get the vital information as quickly as possible. And for new companies, usually a business plan should be under 10 pages. Even 10 pages is a lot. But if you feel like your idea is complicated, You can do that for existing businesses.

Obviously things are more complicated. There are more things going on, so your plan can be longer, but really try to aim for fewer pages. Because again, the more the reader has to fish out for the right information, the more likely they're going to get frustrated, the more likely they are to quit. So you need to give them the vital information as fast as possible, as clearly as possible.

And of course, this course focuses mostly on new businesses. If you're writing this for a new company, it should be relatively short. And of course, if somebody specifically asks For your plan, then you just ask them, are you looking for one page plan or full plan that will give you a sense of what they're looking for so you don't give them something where [00:03:00] they expect something else.

