Rating: 3 stars

Headline: An informative guide for those with pre-existing knowledge of the corporate world

Review:

I cannot count the number of times I have sat through episodes of the television show “The Apprentice” with my head in my hands. Speaking specifically on the British version, the series routinely includes a particularly challenging episode where prospective investment candidates undergo multiple gruelling interviews where inevitably everyone’s business proposals gets ripped to shreds. Watching through my fingers, all I can think is “do these people even know what a business plan is?”

I have these toe-curling scenes playing in my head as I reach for How to Write a Business Plan. A fellow British national, Alessandro Bosasco even refers to the television show “Dragon’s Den” (the UK version of “Shark Tank”) as another example of people being very publicly grilled before deciding whether or not to invest in a start-up business. This book is intended as an antidote to the condition of poor planning, a no-nonsense guide to writing a business proposal from calculating turnover projections to the basic structure of what a business plan should follow.

This is informative book is assisted by a large number of illustrative spreadsheets and screengrabs, produced for a fictional case study (a business in the catering industry). While there is a lot to digest here…there is also a lot to digest here! Personally I found it difficult to read and interpret the spreadsheets and data sets, having to scroll back and forth between pages to interpret the wording in bulky paragraphs and match it with the visual content. While the portrait orientation of books can be space limiting (especially for Excel spreadsheets), it can be equally difficult to interpret on a digital device when the same images are flipped horizontally.

Good for those already possessing a level of business acumen, more fresh-faced readers may struggle when it comes to How to Write a Business Plan. Another level of granular detail, annotated images and breaking down the workings out between certain figures would have made it more accessible. With a few revisions I can see this being a highly popular guide in future editions.

AEB Reviews

Links:

Reedsy Discovery Review: AEB Reviews – “How to Write a Business Plan” by Alessandro Bolasco

Purchase Link: “How to Write a Business Plan” by Alessandro Bolasco (Amazon)

Author Website: https://www.bolasco-consulting.com/

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