Bankable Business Plans: A Successful Entrepreneur's Guide to Starting and Growing Any Business

The secrets behind creating compelling and successful business plans that are sure to attract financial backers and help business owners stay on track are revealed step-by-step in this invaluable guide. Containing clear, detailed explanations of the guidelines that banks, venture capital firms, and the Small Business Administration (SBA) use to grant loans and other financial support to businesses, this crucial resource equips potential business owners with a wealth of knowledge on lending procedures.&

This guide includes hundreds of useful ideas for developing, operating, marketing, and building a profitable business. Also included are copious examples and resources for further study. By demonstrating how to make each business plan uniquely suited to a particular endeavor--such as home-based businesses, sole proprietorships, and franchise operations--this comprehensive handbook ensures that anyone can embark on a new business venture with confidence and clarity.

The newly updated Third Edition includes:

Increased focus on Social Entrepreneurship or Social Ventures.Updated examples, including ventures that apply the latest technology.

An expanded section that presents eight fundamental thinking tools that underlie entrepreneurial success and creativity. These include how to nurture your creativity and develop and test ideas without spending a penny.

A new and expanded section on establishing feasibility before creating a full business plan.

Expanded tools for researching business ideas, interviewing potential customers, and developing a competitive analysis to judge your ideas against potential competitors.

A simple and direct Venture Assessment Tool to specify the issues that are essential for success and enables you to evaluate the potential of your venture.

Edward G. Rogoff is a professor of entrepreneurship and former dean of the LIU Brooklyn School of Business. He was formerly the Lawrence N. Field Professor of Entrepreneurship at Baruch College of the City University of New York.

Dr. Rogoff has served as the academic director of the Lawrence N. Field Center for Entrepreneurship at Baruch College. He teaches and conducts research in entrepreneurship, particularly relative to minority and later-life issues. Dr. Rogoff was named the 2010 Outstanding Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year by the United States Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

He is the author of Bankable Business Plans, Bankable Business Plans for Non-Profits, co-author of The Entrepreneurial Conversation and The Second Chance Revolution: Working for Yourself after 50. He has published in such journals as The Journal of Business and Entrepreneurship, The Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship, Family Business Review, and Journal of Small Business Management. He initiated and supervised the largest study of minority entrepreneurs in the United States, the National Minority Business Owners Survey.

Professor Rogoff has written articles for the New York Times, Forbes, and Newsday, as well as having been a guest on CNN. Prior to joining the faculty at Baruch College, he was an entrepreneur in the radio broadcasting industry where he headed two companies that operated 23 radio stations throughout the United States. He was the president of the Hemophilia Association of New York for more than twenty years, and continues to serve on its board and the boards of the Hemophilia Services Consortium and LiveOnNY, the New York organ donor network.

Entrepreneur and e-commerce pioneer Jeff Bezos is the founder and executive chair of the e-Amazon, also the owner of the Washington Post, and he is the founder of the space exploration company Blue Origin.

Bezos was born in 1964 in New Mexico, and studied computer science and electrical engineering at Princeton University. In 1990, he became the youngest senior vice president at the investment firm D.E. Shaw. In 1994 he quit his job and started Amazon.com as an online bookstore that over the next decades became one of the internet's biggest successes. He is now one of the richest people in the world with an estimated net worth of more than $140 billion.