What does it take to be a leader? Although it can be defined in many different ways, a true leader takes his personal characteristics and puts them toward a specific goal or cause. Interestingly enough, being a business owner does not instantly make a person a leader.

So many people have great ideas, but most of those ideas do not begin as successful businesses. In many cases, these ideas are put into motion even before they are fully formulated and can stand-alone as a business. With funding getting scarcer and scarcer, it is best to have a solid business model in place before you start operating a business. In this report, Abby Johnson discusses the process of actually turning these ideas into business models. Check out this video report on SmallBusinessNewz for all the details.

Today marks the end of our series on Business Plans as we look at the last section: Projections. Just as we mentioned in the beginning, this section could be included in the Financial Plan section since it discusses sources and uses of funding, sales/revenue expectations, and total expenses needed; or, it could stand-alone. Entrepreneurs are often intimidated when making their first-time predictions. They do not want to undercut their business, but they also don’t want to appear overly confident either. Understand that projections are produced through the research from the other sections of the Business Plan as well as through educated guesses. Find out more in the SmallBusinessNewz report on Projections.

Continuing in our Business Plan series, today’s segment covers the Financial Plan section. This section comes second to the last because it uses data from the other sections. It is critical that the other Business Plan sections contain correct information because if they don’t, then your estimations and projections will be inaccurate. Learn more about the Financial Plan section in this video on SmallBusinessNewz.

We’ve come a long way in our Business Plan series, but we have a few more sections left. Today’s segment looks at the Management Team. One of the biggest mistakes people make is simply including their management’s resumes into this section. While their resumes should be referenced, this section should be more detailed and focused on their relevant abilities. The 4 main sections within the Management Team section include: Ownership Structure, Internal Management Team, External Management Team, and Human Resources Needs. Check out all the details from Reporter Abby Johnson right here on SmallBusinessNewz.

As we continue our series on Business Plans, today we’re looking at the Competitive Analysis. This is the section in which you must explain what benefits your business will provide to your customers that your competition can’t or won’t supply. Before you write your Competitive Analysis, you have to thoroughly research your competitors. Take a look at this report from Abby Johnson and learn how you can investigate your competition and then compile it together for your written Competitive Analysis.