The Business Plan Writing Process

The process, step by step

Seven steps. Three of them are yours, four are Dr. Paul's. The plan moves as fast as the slowest one, which is almost always the questionnaire.

• 1

  Your move

  Pick your plan tier and pay the deposit

  Plan tiers are sized by how complex your business is, how many employees you have, and how much funding you are seeking. A solo operator asking for $80,000 does not need the same document as a thirty person company raising $1M.

  A $100 deposit reserves your place on the writing schedule. If you are not sure which tier fits, call before you buy. Dr. Paul would rather spend five minutes on the phone than move you between tiers later.

  • Deposit reserves your slot on the calendar
  • Balance is due once scope is confirmed in step 4
  • Writing begins after the balance is paid
• 2

  Your move

  Complete the intake questionnaire

  Within one business day of your deposit you receive the intake questionnaire. This is the same document Dr. Paul has used with over 1,000 businesses, and it is the single biggest factor in how fast your plan comes back.

  It asks for the things a lender will interrogate: what you sell, who buys it, what it costs you to deliver, what you expect to earn, who you compete with, and what you are asking a lender or investor to fund.

  • Fill it in with real figures, not placeholders
  • Attach anything you already have: quotes, leases, price lists, tax returns
  • Where you truly do not know a number, write that instead of guessing
• 3

  Together

  The clarification call

  A 15 to 30 minute call with Dr. Paul personally. Not a salesperson, not an account manager. He reads your questionnaire beforehand and comes to the call with the gaps already marked.

  This is where the plan is actually shaped. He will push back on numbers that will not survive underwriting, and he will tell you if your funding target looks unrealistic for your stage. It is more useful to hear that now than from a loan officer six weeks later.

• 4

  Together

  Scope confirmation and balance payment

  After the call you get written confirmation of what is being produced: the tier, the page range, the financial statements included, and the delivery date. Once you approve that scope and pay the balance, your plan goes into the writing queue and the delivery clock starts.

• 5

  Dr. Paul

  Research and drafting

  Dr. Paul writes the plan. Market research, industry conditions, competitive landscape, operations, management, and marketing strategy, structured the way SBA underwriters and commercial lenders expect to read it.

  AI assists with research gathering and consistency checking. It does not write your plan. Dr. Paul builds the structure first, applies fourteen years of working with real owners to the analysis, and reviews every word before anything leaves his desk. AI-assisted, expert-led, always.

• 6

  Dr. Paul

  The financial model

  Your projections are built from your numbers, not dropped in from a generic template. Assumptions are documented so you can explain where every figure came from, because a lender will ask and a blank stare loses the loan.

  Depending on your tier this includes some combination of a 12 or 24 month profit and loss, multi year projections, a balance sheet, cash flow, breakeven analysis, and financial ratios. Your scope confirmation from step 4 lists exactly which.

• 7

  Delivery

  Your plan arrives, in 7 days or less

  You receive the finished plan by email in Microsoft Word and PDF. Word so you can keep editing it as your business changes, PDF so you have a clean copy to hand a lender.

  Read it properly when it arrives. Your revision window opens the day it is emailed to you and runs for 30 days.

When the 7 day clock starts

What Dr. Paul needs from you

Your plan is only as strong as the information behind it. Per the Terms and Conditions, clients are solely responsible for providing accurate business information, such as startup costs, estimated sales, and operating costs, to our business plan writers.

• Startup or expansion costs, itemized as closely as you can
• Realistic revenue expectations, with the reasoning behind them
• Operating costs: rent, payroll, insurance, fuel, supplies, software
• Your funding target and what the money is actually for
• Ownership structure and who is on the management team
• Any documents you already have: quotes, leases, licenses, prior tax returns

Revisions: what is included and what is not

Revisions must be requested within 30 days of the initial draft being emailed to you. How many revisions you receive depends on your plan tier, so check the Terms and Conditions for the tier you purchased.

Scheduling and cancellations

Calls require a minimum of 8 hours notice to cancel or reschedule. Notice by phone, text, or email is all accepted, subject to written confirmation. Your writing slot is held on the schedule, so late cancellations move your delivery date.

Payment and refunds

Business plans and business plan templates are non refundable once purchased. That policy exists because this is custom professional work: once Dr. Paul has run your call and started writing, the time is spent and cannot be recovered.

It is also why this page exists. Read it, ask questions, and call before you pay if anything is unclear. Dr. Paul answers his own phone and would far rather answer a question now than resolve a misunderstanding later. The full policy is in the Terms and Conditions.

Questions people ask before starting