beginning of each chapter containing quick plan components and guides you to the sections youll need.     Customized plan. Of course, you can start with a quick plan and add components from the complete business plan to suit your needs. When deciding what to include and what to exclude, ask yourself:     Which of my statements are the strongest? Which statements do my backers want to see? Note that the Appendices contain blank forms as well as sample business plans for a manufacturing company, a project development and a service business. Meet Antoinette     In an effort to make sense out of the thousands of types of small businesses, I have roughly divided them into five main ones: retail, wholesale, service, manufacturing and project development. All the financial tools I present can be used by all five. However, for the sake of simplicity, I follow one particular retail business-a dress shop. In so doing, I illustrate most of the planning concepts and techniques necessary to understand and raise money for any business.     As you read through the text youll meet Antoinette Gorzak, a friend of mine. Antoinette wants to open a dress shop, and she has allowed me to use her plans and thought processes as an example of a complete and well-prepared business plan for a retail store. Youll find parts of her plan presented in different chapters as we discuss the various components of a complete business plan. Getting Started     Before you sit down to write your plan, youll want to gather together these essentials:     a word processor or typewriter   Now, heres a word about revisions and changing your plan. I firmly believe in writing your first thoughts on paper and letting them rest for a day or two. Then you can edit, expand and revise later to get a more perfect statement. In this book, I show examples of Antoinettes writing process. (Im grateful shes such a good sport.)     Most people discover about halfway through writing their plan that they want to change either their assumptions or some of the plan theyve already written. My best advice is this: Complete the plan all the way through on your original set of assumptions. That way you can see the financial impact of your ideas, and it will be much easier to make the right changes in the second draft. If you start revising individual parts of the plan before you have the complete picture, youll waste a lot of energy. If youre like me, youll rewrite and edit your plan several times once youve finished the first run-through. And a Few More Words     As I write this, the book has been in print for over ten years and has sold more than 100,000 copies. I have heard that it has been pirated in some parts of the former Soviet Union. Since it first came out I have taught, lectured and consulted on business plans in a wide variety of forums. I have taken that experience and reformulated the exercises in the book to make them more