Creating a Business

As you create your business plan, you can use my business plan for guidance.  Download my document and save it in your student drive for future reference.

Step 1

Start Your Business Plan

Open a Microsoft Excel document and save using the class saving guidelines. (File name: "YourNameBusinessPlan")

At the bottom of your document, you will see that there are already three sheets that have been created.  Rename Sheet 1 to Overview.

Come up with a product that you would like to sell.  When deciding on a product to sell, keep the following in mind:

• Is this a product you know something about, and/or would be willing to learn more about?
• Is this a product that you can feel passionate about?
• Is this a product that people would buy?

If your answer is yes to all of the above (and your product is school appropriate), you have found your product!  Enter in the following in your Business Plan Document on the Overview page: "Product: [your product]"

Navigate to the Lemonade Stand Project Spreadsheet and fill in your information.

Step 2

Find a Market

Now that you have found a product to sell, you will need to find the best location to sell your product.

• Come up with a place that you would like to sell your product (SE Portland? Beijing? San Francisco? North Dakota?)
• Navigate to maps.google.com
• Search for your place.  My place is Boulder, Colorado.  After searching for your place, the map screen will show a zoomed out picture of your chosen location.

View Larger Map

• You should now search nearby for vendors that sell products similar to yours. I clicked on "Search nearby", then entered in "Mountain Bike"
• I have found that there are about 10 vendors in Boulder that sell mountain bikes. Side note: this could mean one of two things: either there are too many mountain bike shops in Boulder (too much supply), or there are a lot of people who want to ride mountain bikes (high demand).
• Bonus point! (Not required) In your business plan overview sheet, defend why your product supplies the demand in your chosen location.

View Larger Map

Step 3

Market Research

You will need to do some research to find out how much to charge for your product.

• In your Business Plan Excel document, rename Sheet 2 to "Market Research"
• Accross the top row (Row 1) of your Market Research sheet, create the following headers, one per cell:
• Company
• Product
• Price
• Fill in the Market Research sheet by searching the shops you found in your area.
• My first shop I found is "Redstone Cyclery" in Boulder.
• I went to their website and found a mountain bike for sale, then entered the information in my Market Research:
• Under the Company column, I entered "Redstone Cyclery"
• Under the Product column, I entered "Tomac Primer 220 Mountain Bike"
• Under the Price column, I entered "$2,349.00"
• I repeated this process for as many companies in the area that I could.
• Once you have at least 5 companies and products recorded, find the average price of the products in your area by selecting all the prices in the price column, then clicking the Sum key drop down menu, and selecting "Average".
• The average price of a mountain bike in Boulder is $2,399.20.
• Let's assume that to purchase your product from a supplier, you will pay half of the price you will sell the product for.
• I used the Sum key again to automatically divide the average price in half =SUM(C8/2)  This will be useful later if I find that the price of bikes changes and I need my calculations to stay current.
• Now that you have divided the average price of your product in half, you have found out the cost of the product.

Step 4

If you have finished all of the steps above, it is time to use Excel to Calculate your Expenses