LIFTOFF! is a serious tool for creating business plans that span the range from startup ventures to established corporate planning. Find out why and how to subscribe to LIFTOFF! in the following three selections...

Business Plan = many business ventures start with an idea, but it is difficult to solidify that idea and to be able to discuss that idea with friends or financiers. That is why many business ideas never get off the ground. To document the business idea is easier said than done: it required an organized approach to presenting the information so that you can get started and funded to make that idea become real. It provides a road-map that ensures all those involved in establishing the business have a common vision of what the intended outcome will be.

LIFTOFF! is one tool that helps you to create a written business plan that presents your ideas in a formal report suitable for all stakeholders who have direct involvement in what you do: partners, employees, service providers, financiers, and more. It will present your vision and mission, as well as detailed financial forecasts that bankers or venture capitalists look to before they decide if it is prudent to invest in a business. It helps you to sell yourself and the business concept and highlights the knowledge you bring to the business to make it successful.

LIFTOFF! is designed to make it easier to create a business plan and to do number crunching to forecast the bottom-line results. Excel™-based, it provides a familiar format, with step-by-step guidance on how to deliver the results you are looking for. You have full use of all the Excel™ functionality as well as specialized software to add capabilities not offered in native Excel™. Nobody is going to claim that software will make the job of defining what the business is about easier: while Excel™ takes care of the calculations, the business plan includes plenty of narrative that is explained, but that cannot be fully automated.

LIFTOFF! is not the only game in town: you must be clear about what you want from a business plan software tool to decide which is the better choice for you. This website contains plenty of information about our product, but it is important to be informed about other products as well. PC Magazine did a comparison between these software options, that excluded LIFTOFF! as it was not yet launched at the time. So, we have created a comparison table in a downloadable PDF document to help you decide what software is the best choice for you.

LIFTOFF! has more features than considered by PC Magazine (that was focused on the business plan), and on this website you will find why you may also want marketing plans and/or project plans that are needed to have a detailed analysis of a marketing mix and the effort (and costs) involved in creating a physical business presence suitable for operations. Unless you plan a rather simple business, these added plans deliver critical planning information that stakeholders will look for. Please click the above link for a comparison chart comparing LIFTOFF! with other business plan services. We think you will be impressed with what LIFTOFF! has to offer!

30-Day Free Trial = to make sure LIFTOFF! is the right tool for business planning you can use the software for free up to 30 days before you purchase a user license. Within 10 days from the expiration date the software will start reminding you that a license renewal is due before that software locks up. Even so, your data will be preserved if you save your Excel™ workbook, and you can always decide to obtain or renew your user license later.

Note: If you work with a service provider who creates a business plan for you, they have the option to save the workbook under your Email address, which then activates a 30-day trial that lets you work with that business plan. You can extend that term by purchasing a license without losing any of your data.

During the trial there are no restrictions on using the software, so you can explore all it has to offer to help you in your planning. Our motivation for making this available to you is simply that we want to reduce the failure rate for new business ventures (which is over 50% failing within the first year, and 80% failing within five years). If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Our logic for the 30-day trial is that this gives you enough time to determine if there is value in your business before you commit to the tools to fine-tune your business idea and optimize the launch.

As the trial period comes to an end, you should have a good idea if you want to use the software long-term, and what functionality you want to subscribe to. At the basic level the LIFTOFF! workbook supports a business plan. At the enhanced level, you can also create marketing plans and project plans. If you look at LIFTOFF! from a business services provider viewpoint you can also opt for the professional level that adds opportunities to collaborate with clients. Depending on the license duration and the level of services you want you will see a price that reflects these options:

If you follow the link at right, you will go to a sign-up page, which will unlock access to the download page where you can find the LIFTOFF! workbook and the user guide(s). You also find the terms and conditions that you can download and read before you decide you want to use the software. You will find a complete set of instructions for how to write a business plan in the user guide, which will be useful even if you decide not to purchase the software. This is our thank you for reviewing our products that we hope you will recommend to others.

LIFTOFF! license = after you have explored our software under the 30-day trial terms (described in the above drop-down) you can renew the user license when you decide you want to continue using the software. We have licenses that cover short term (3-months), medium term (6-months), long term (12-months) and lifetime use depending on how much planning you want to do.

Use one of 3 modes = because your needs may be more, or less, intensive we have 3 usage modes that you can select from:

• Basic mode = this is the basic business plan that is typically used from a small retail-, professional-, or service business where there is no major inventory and no broad selection of what you offer.
• Enhanced mode = a full-feature version includes the business plan, marketing plan, and project plan. Marketing plans provide sub-plans for different product lines, to evaluate which mix is most effective for your business idea. Project plans reflect a build-out stage to track and budget steps involved in leasehold improvement and outfitting of a business location.
• Professional mode = this is the full-feature version designed to incorporate a collaboration capability, so a practitioner can export a version for their clients to review and update, and then import those results to continue the process for as many cycles as it takes to refine the plan.

The licensing structure for these different modes reflects both the functionality you need and the term you pay for, so that you can decide which option is more to your liking. Note that you can upgrade or downgrade a license on the next renewal, so the needed features will be activated or closed as required. The pricing structure is:

On the order page you will find all 12 pricing options, so you can click on a bullet that reflects the license mode and the renewal term that you want. Before this selection page takes you to the PayPal™ ordering process, you must acknowledge that you will accept our terms and conditions. Note that all license sales are final – if you are not sure after the trial offer, use a shorter term so you can really use the software before you commit to a 1-year or lifetime license.

Note: A lifetime option simply means you can continue using the selected LIFTOFF! workbooks for as long as Microsoft™ continues to support Excel™ (which looks like it will be as close to infinite as you can imagine). You do not pay license fees for that extended use period. Keep in mind that if LIFTOFF! can prevent you from making an investment in the wrong business opportunity the ROI of your investment in a LIFTOFF! license is immense!

We use PayPal™ to ensure your order is securely processed. We only collect your Email contact information, so we can follow-up with useful information. Our privacy policy can be neatly summarized in “we do not want to know your private data” in our database. The exception is for affiliated service providers that want to use the option to be listed on our affiliates page for reference (so prospective clients can find them and reach out for help if required).

Using LIFTOFF! Excel™-VBA software, the entrepreneur can focus on creating one (set of) master plan(s) that can be used to create alternative plans. If they need help creating the worksheets by customizing our sample worksheets, that will be a one-time investment. Instead of paying over and over for alternate scenarios there is nothing to stop the entrepreneur from updating the worksheet estimates to create those alternative versions at no extra cost. LIFTOFF! is offered under a user license, described in the details page.

Terms and Conditions The use of a subscription license implies consent to use LIFTOFF! under terms and conditions outlined in the attached PDF document. It is just 2 pages – an easy read – and to the point for ensuring an understanding of what we offer and what you can expect. We have a 30-day trial offer that we recommend if you are not sure of what is involved in business planning or how it will work for you. Separate from these terms and conditions, we also recommend that you obtain professional advice from an accountant, lawyer, and other experts before you make any commitments on the strength of your planning output. While launching a business starts with a plan, there are many more considerations to review before you make formal agreements to get started. We have additional information on what to do as recommended in our LIFTOFF! user guide.

LIFTOFF! is your tool of choice for business planning that helps you to grow and manage your business. The next four selections describe how...

Business Planning for start-ups = it is important to ensure new ventures start off right. There are significant risks involved in starting a business: over 50% of all new ventures fail in the first year, and within 5 years over 80% of those new ventures will have shut down. Our premise is that with a proper business planning approach more new ventures would thrive, survive, and flourish: that is why we developed LIFTOFF! to make it as easy as possible to do this yourself (or with minimal help). Business planning services can be quite expensive, which is a deterrent to new entrepreneurs.

Keep in mind that when you have done the initial work it may be prudent to consult with a financial expert to make sure that your forecasts are solid, and a real-estate expert to make sure that you focus on the right premises for your business, as well as a legal advisor to make sure your venture is on solid ground. LIFTOFF! will give you the opportunity to explore your ideas without being pushed into going along with a professionally prepared plan simply because the revisions cost you much additional money you prefer to save for your business investment.

To learn more about the LIFTOFF! Excel™-VBA software, and how it can help you to explore planning your business, click the above button to download details. It is important to understand what the difference is between a business plan created to impress any potential lender or investor, as opposed to helping you assess if the opportunity is actually a good investment for you. Our software will help you with both objectives and provide much more detailed analyses than what you can expect from basic business plan preparation services.

One of the major challenges for entrepreneurs is finding money to start a business. A potential source for funding is to explore available grants to help you get launched, which is why many would-be entrepreneurs need business planning to prepare themselves for a potential grant application. It does not matter if you are planning a new business or you want to expand an existing business, or even add new projects or products to an existing company, a business plan is a recommended first step.

Partners, investors, sponsors, or funding resources want to see a carefully prepared plan of action. Basic information in a spreadsheet format that details the business and its value points are key components of a LIFTOFF! business plan, while graphs, models and projections are assets that make a business plan readily understood.

LIFTOFF! is one tool that helps you to create a written business plan that presents your ideas in a formal report suitable for all stakeholders who have direct involvement in what you do: partners, employees, service providers, financiers, and more. It will present your vision and mission, as well as detailed financial forecasts that bankers or venture capitalists look to before they decide if it is prudent to invest in a business. It helps you to sell yourself and the business concept and highlights the knowledge you bring to the business to make it successful.

LIFTOFF! features more than basic business planning: it includes marketing planning to evaluate your products and services, and how you will draw attention to what you have to offer. It also includes specialized project planning to help you to determine the effort and cost involved in establishing a physical business location, which can add up to sink a business venture before it gets the chance to open their doors to patrons. You can also use this for business cases to justify the purchase of major assets for which funding must be requested.

If you are familiar with grant writing (or want to be) you must know how a LIFTOFF! business plan forms a cornerstone in the grant writing and application process. This comes with a caveat that a grant application is quite different from a loan application where you discuss the business plan with a lender, or an investor application where the focus is on the potential benefit to the investor. Grant funding simply wants the funds applied to ventures that match the fund objectives to benefit a larger cause by supporting businesses that further that cause.

To learn more about grant writing and how LIFTOFF! has a major role to play in preparing a grant application, download our PDF document “Introduction to Grant Writing” that may be helpful to get the funding your business venture needs to get off the ground. This explains the challenges and the effort involved to seek funding from grants, and general guidelines for planning and executing a grant application that may open doors to your new business venture. If it does not enable you to do it yourself, it will explain why you may want to engage a grant writer to help you seek funding from different sources.

Business Planning and Progress Tracking = using LIFTOFF! as part of a longer-term monitoring process to keep the business on track to achieving profit objectives is a natural extension of business planning. This is not budgeting – an accounting focus of allocating funds for designated purposes. The idea is to assess the impact of real results on the intent of what the entrepreneur envisioned. Specifically, when the plan involves a broad range of products and/or services, it is prudent to take a hard look at the goals and objectives of product lines that may not contribute to the bottom-line profits of the business as anticipated.

The accounting assumptions of continuity “as is” (a static model) may not be a good premise for continuously testing the validity of that model, and instead you may use an evolving “to be” (a dynamic model) paradigm that hones the business potential in a regular review process. Initially reviews may be quarterly, and when the business matures that can change to semi-annual or annual reviews. The budgeting approach lets you use the accounting system to implement that evolving model by adjusting a budget to guide that evolution without changing the basic tools you use in a business, rather than to force the results subject to “static” assumptions.

The entrepreneur can master this process personally or they can engage a business coach to guide this analysis and transformation effort. Although technically you can make this a “Do-It-Yourself” effort, it helps to have an independent assessment and sounding board to focus specifically on this aspect of progress tracking and potential revisions to the underlying business plan. Follow this link to learn more about using LIFTOFF! Excel™-VBA software for on-going planning and progress tracking.

Business Planning for Leasehold Evaluations = the structure of LIFTOFF! lets you model product lines, including space requirements to satisfy the needs of retailing those products (showroom, stockroom, etc.) or to accommodate a restaurant or any other business of that kind. You may create alternative business plans that reflect a different mix of products and/or services and come up with a total space forecast to operate that business. What happens is that you look for suitable space to rent and for different locations you find out what square footage accommodates the plans you have. Obviously, you can eliminate those options that are too small for you.

The next step is to evaluate how the suitable options match your marketing strategy to make sure that the location is compatible with your marketing objectives. There is a major difference between locating in a central shopping center and locating in a suburban outpost. Realtors know all about location, location, location: if you get that wrong you wonder where the customers are. So again, make sure the location fits the demographics of your target customers to make sure they find you, or else think long and hard about signing a lease. The third step is to determine how you can turn the retail space into the business you have in mind, and what leasehold allowances a landlord offers to help you transform that space into a store or a restaurant.

Before you get carried away, you will want to develop a detailed plan to itemize the transformation and preparation steps complete with time and cost estimates, which can be affected by restrictions on construction during business hours. You may need input from an architect, engineer, construction manager, and other experts to define what it takes to get that work done. The same transformation in an easily accessible space may not cost as much as doing essentially the same work in more restricted space. Even though estimates are just that, it will allow you to compare the results of establishing the business in different locations based on similar assumptions.

With LIFTOFF! Excel™-VBA software it is easy to build copies of the business plan to reflect different locations and calculate the bottom-line before you sign the lease. Unlike traditional business plan preparation services, there are no extra costs to generate as many alternative plans as you need to evaluate your options. Even if you get assistance to build the plans it is easy to make changes that reflect updates, and again there are no additional costs involved in getting those changes into a new set of business plans.

LIFTOFF! has the ability to serve large multi-divisional/departmental planning hierarchies by consolidating across planning centres. Read how this can be accomplished in the next three selections...

Business Planning for Business Expansion = your business is not a static model but continues to evolve as new opportunities emerge or the volume of business has you thinking about larger premises. In this context, LIFTOFF! Excel™-VBA software provides the tools to consider what is involved and how to manage this expansion in a controlled manner. Some aspects are like starting a new venture, but keep in mind that you have a going concern that you want to preserve by taking customers with you to the new location.

What makes this unique is not special capabilities of the software you use for the new venture, but how you use the software to explore the impact of that transformation. You want to improve the ROI of your expanded business, not just increase costs that might lower the ROI. Unless you “know” you will never expand the business or move to a new location, it makes sense to invest in a long-term LIFTOFF! license and to maintain the active business plan so that you can evaluate if your current location is in any way limiting the potential of what you could achieve.

It is also important to keep an eye on the potential for selling a business. You want to make sure it has value, and that it will be positively assessed by a purchaser. The reasons for selling are important: what you do not have to say is that you expect a downturn in years to come, or that you have issues with the current location that can work fine for another entrepreneur who may be prepared to make the investments needed to make the business vibrant again. In our examples we include outgrowing a location that no longer works for you, but that would be perfect for a more niche business opportunity that does not need as much retail space.

To explore these ideas in more detail, click on this link to get an introduction to typical growth scenarios and how these will impact on decisions for how you establish your business from the start. Of course, each business is unique: while we use an example based on retail, the concepts apply to any kind of business that is growing. Whether you move to another store in a mall or move right across town will have a major impact on what is involved in completing the change, which is where planning becomes an essential step in the process.

Business Planning for Capital Investments usually referred to a business case analysis: it uses the LIFTOFF! project planning component to evaluate investments in tangible capital assets that would normally be depreciated. The purpose is to find the net bottom-line impact of an investment on operations, including the installation and deployment related costs, as well as a cash-flow analysis of the undertaking. It is a standard decision-analysis process, but you can also integrate the results of the analysis with a current business plan to see the overall impact on profitability.

The core business plan can also include capital investments that are necessary to be able to open the business. For example, a butcher shop must have a walk-in freezer before it can operate. Whether it needs more than one becomes a business case to evaluate the cost/benefits of that investment. You may have alternate start-up plans to reflect the different assumptions about what assets to include from the beginning and count that as part of your initial costs. However, if you plan to add a freezer at a future date then the cost of installation may be significant. With LIFTOFF! you can analyze these alternatives to decide which option works out better for you.

The decision of additional walk-in freezers may be directly tied to marketing plans for different lines of business. You would not use the same freezer for meat and for the bakery or other purposes, but it is important to decide on your business mix and add the associated business case to reflect the specific assets required for that business. LIFTOFF! can reflect the asset investments as part of the marketing plan bottom line so that those costs will be included when you decide to include that product line.

Using LIFTOFF! Excel™-VBA software, you can control how a business plan consolidates the parts that apply. Basically, you can have multiple copies of the business plan, and include the marketing plans that reflect a business mix scenario, so you can compare different business options at the business plan level. Compare that to traditional business plan preparation where you pay by the plan and where you cannot change the assumptions on your own: this delivers a huge value to clients who want an in-depth assessment of what opportunities exist.

Troubleshooting is important to ensure new ventures start off right and to manage and track progress in established business organizations. Most entrepreneurs are quite resilient to succeed. Determination can be a good thing, just as persistence, doggedness, and stick-to-it-iveness, but has its limits if you chase the WRONG thing. SEARS showed that you can blow $6 BILLION and still go bankrupt. Stores closed left and right with “GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE” signs. How did it happen?

Entrepreneurs may grasp at straws while at the helm of a sinking ship, retail giants are no exception. While SEARS innovatively revolutionized the shopping experience in the early 1900’s they did not keep up with change and were unprepared to handle the new dynamic, and they panicked. Instead of allocating $6 BILLION to invest in on-line shopping, they poured money into upgrading stores. It seemed they were afraid to enter the 21st century. They tried to protect their stock price by buying back their own stock, instead of analyzing why the stock price was taking a nosedive.

You can play that card only so long: eventually the stock price crashed anyway from almost $144 in 2007 to below $1 just before they filed for bankruptcy. It boils down to not having a plan and not using a plan to monitor what to do. Instead they panicked and tried anything and everything without much thought. Even with a $6 BILLION buffer they still managed to go belly-up. Lessons learned say you had better invest in solid business-saving advice from a knowledgeable coach or consultant who knows what is needed, and who is not linked to the skeletons in the closet.

Using LIFTOFF! Excel™-VBA software, a coach can explore existing marketing plans, identify new marketing opportunities, evaluate strategy, build project plans to help them transition from a failing “as is” to a restructured “to be” organization in tune with their customer base, and created new followers who are more at home in a 21st century “click-and-brick” business. SEARS went the way of the Dodo. LIFTOFF! can help you avoid becoming an obituary by freeing you from this type of blind-spot thinking that at least can cost you opportunities, but at worst can kill your business.

Start a business venture with a clear focus and strategy, and then maintain the plan both to monitor progress towards its goals, but also to test the plan against a changing business dynamic. With all their corporate financial wizardry SEARS was blind to the notion that even successful business models eventually grow stale, so you must remain vigilant about the relevancy of those models, and not pour money into outdated business ventures.

You must continually validate your assumptions (at least once a year) to know if changes are called for. By looking ahead and paying attention, you can avoid panic and knee-jerk decisions that can put you into a tail-spin, just as in your driving you should avoid last-second panic maneuvers and leave room to hit the brakes, instead of running off the road and achieving a total loss. Click on the link to learn how you can be proactive and avoid the fate of SEARS by monitoring actual results and identifying viable alternative strategy.

LIFTOFF! is a great tool to support your business planning service as a coach or consultant to entrepreneurs and business executives. Find out how in the following selections...

Business Planning Service Providers = entrepreneurs consulting you for creating a business plan will not only be a source of direct revenue, they can also become a client of your accounting practice, or work with you to find the right facilities to start the business, or whatever other services you provide where LIFTOFF! can be a great addition to work with prospects on a fee for services basis. Most entrepreneurs will sooner or later need accounting or real estate services to launch their business, and it is a reasonable assumption that you can provide those services when you already have established a good working relationship. For accountants this may end up as a long-term relationship to provide accounting services.

Realtors normally work on commission: that means they only get paid when there is a completed commercial lease. Therefore, they should have a vested interest in the prospect having a solid business plan that can convince commercial landlords to sign an offer to lease. Not only that, they need to know what size premises are required, the attributes for a retail establishment, or the zoning compatible with an industrial operation. The client needs a marketing plan to make sure that the site selection is suitable for the business purposes of the entrepreneur. Even if you simply arrange the services of a planning coach, regular follow-up can cement a client relationship.

Consultants and subject-matter experts that would similarly benefit from being able to provide LIFTOFF! services to their clients. For example, a restaurant designer can work out different scale layouts that accommodate different numbers of diners, to strike a profitable balance between the cost of a lease and leasehold improvements vs. the potential number of meals served based on seating capacity. Many smaller restaurants simply cannot generate the revenues to generate sufficient profit that allows them to thrive, something that is easily avoided with better planning.

To explore using LIFTOFF! Excel™-VBA software to expand your menu of services offered, review the details provided in the link at right. The concern about the time commitment for a traditional business plan preparation no longer exists, since you can collaborate with your clients, who will do the bulk of the work while exploring how they perceive their new venture. Your primary services focus never changes, but you will help to establish a more effective business relationship that should lead to longer-term opportunities.

Business Planning Coaching Service = as a business coach you develop a special relationship to help your client become more successful. LIFTOFF! is a great tool to add a tangible service to a relationship that many entrepreneurs find hard to define. Instead of getting involved when the business appears to be stagnating, this is the opportunity to get involved when you can create a solid foundation that prevents the business from stagnating. Obviously, this adds a different dimension to coaching, but it is a valuable dimension to encourage the entrepreneur to solidify their vision.

A coaching approach that shifts the emphasis on analyzing alternative opportunities and strategies for establishing a profitable business is quite different from writing the business plan to impress investors. You can still transform the plan produced by the LIFTOFF! software if you want, but what impresses financiers and investors is having the ability to respond to questions about the assumptions and consequences, so that you can demonstrate the ability to respond to situations that may evolve when that business is in full operation.

A coaching approach also transforms writing business plans from a technical writing model to a full-service model of consulting with entrepreneurs. As a coach you have the ability to “challenge” clients’ assumptions and to uncover what is behind those assumptions or suggest alternative possibilities or constraints the entrepreneur has not considered. You can take a more direct approach and build the assumptions from big-picture ideas to help crystallize the vision of the entrepreneur and show ways of generating profit that the entrepreneur might not have considered.

To learn more about using LIFTOFF! Excel™-VBA software in a business coaching practice, follow the link to review details of how you can incorporate these tangible capabilities in your business. You will also learn how to transform the preparation of business plans into an on-going long-term relationship that is unique to coaching, and it still leaves opportunities to create a nurturing relationship that helps to build the abilities of the entrepreneur as the scope of the business grows to where HR competencies become increasingly important for success.

Business Plan Example = this example of LIFTOFF! output lets you see what kind of results you can get. It is important to emphasize that this example is based on a set of default templates, and that you can get these templates customized for almost any type of business. To make the tool more flexible, we separated the LIFTOFF! engine (written in Excel™-VBA) from the actual worksheets that can use the standard Excel™ cell formulas to deliver the desired results. While standard Excel™ has limits with respect to simulation and results analysis, or collaboration, or project planning, the advantage of blending both technologies is that you will have the almost infinite flexibility in how you structure your analysis to meet specific needs of your business.

Excel™ is a proven tool for financial planning that is widely accepted in business, and it is easy to customize the information to make it fit your needs. Except for project scheduling, the LIFTOFF! engine simply works on the data that are then manipulated by the Excel™ cell formulas to compute the resulting values. This establishes careful separation so that most of the results can be audited like any other Excel™ worksheet. Even the scheduler output is carefully measured to what is necessarily automated as opposed to being passed-on to Excel™ for final processing.

To see an example of the default business plan template, look at the PDF you can download at right. Keep in mind that this is mostly a reflection of how you customize the plan using Excel™, whether with LIFTOFF! or not, and if you have some other preferred format we can adapt the worksheets to meet those requirements. There will be a fee for service to create custom reports that are not covered as part of a subscription fee.