Turn Your Business Plan Into Money! Three things to know about writing your business plan.

By Dan Bova

These tips, and many more, can be found in the best-selling book Start Your Own Business.

  1. Bankers, investors and VCs are sophisticated in financial matters, so avoid putting too much hype in your business plan. If it praises your idea as "unprecedented" or "the disruptor that will change the industry forever" you're likely to turn serious investors off.
  2. Spend extra time on your executive summary. Investors are busy! And if your summary is confusing, full of typos or worst of all, boring, they'll likely move on to next pitch and toss your plan in the trash.
  3. Make sure your plan is complete! Entrepreneurs can be in such a rush to get funding that they submit condensed or preliminary plans. The problem is that this opens the door for investors to wonder if missing information even exists, and you risk them losing interest in the time it takes you to compile the rest.

Good luck out there!

Watch more 3 Things to Know videos: Facebook Is a 'Digital Gangster'

Dan Bova

Entrepreneur Staff

VP of Special Projects

Dan Bova is the VP of Special Projects at Entrepreneur.com. He previously worked at Jimmy Kimmel Live, Maxim, and Spy magazine. His latest books for kids include This Day in History, Car and Driver's Trivia Zone, Road & Track Crew's Big & Fast Cars, The Big Little Book of Awesome Stuff, and Wendell the Werewolf. 

Read his humor column This Should Be Fun if you want to feel better about yourself.

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