Overview

Section 3 of this manual guides you through the process of building your own business plan. The section is organized in the steps of building that plan as they are outlined in the long-standing and often used CIRAS publication How to Write a Business Plan.

Under each step of building the plan you will first be shown the applicable page or pages from How to Write a Business Plan. Immediately following, a sample of that page or pages composed for a fictitious processing company – perhaps similar to one you are contemplating – is provided as an example of what you might do at this stage of building your plan and putting it on paper. The not-real company compiled for this example is Cattle Producers Marketing Coop.

Then, following each portion of the business plan presented and the fictitious company’s information that applies to it, you will find a variety of articles that address in-depth the topics included in that particular portion.

.