Memorandum

To: Dr. James Schirmer

University of Michigan - Flint
Eng345 professor

From: John W. Cochran Jr.

University of Michigan – Flint
Eng345 student

Date: February 16, 2010

Subject: Individual Project Proposal

Dr. Schirmer per your request sent on February 9th 2010, I have prepared the
attached individual project proposal for your review and approval. I will be
focusing on preparing a business plan for my individual project. The proposal
will: provide insight into the type of information you can expect to find in this
business plan, how I will go about preparing the plan and other vital
information such as resources to be used, schedules, costs and etc. Should
there be any further information you need in understanding this project
please do not hesitate to respond directly to this message, post a comment
via my blog or twitter site or contact me directly at 517-918-3944. I look
forward to your review and comment.

Enclosure
 Individual Project Proposal
Background

Business Plans are an integral part of our modern economic society.

They are a technical way to provide a person’s or group of partners,
vision for a business idea or the expansion of a current business. They
may be used to look for investors, additional funds or maybe just used
as a sort of road map to keep a business on track to meet goals or
achieve long term expansion or implement new technologies.

Proposal

I plan to create a business plan for starting and operating an

independent financial planning firm. I am going to focus this firm’s
operating platform to be solely a fee only financial planning platform to
help reduce the volume of research and resources and make the
project more manageable. This is also very much in alignment with
how firms are actually choosing to model themselves in the real
economic market.

Benefits

The core benefit of a business plan is that it provides insight into what
an individual or group is planning. This insight will help the person
evaluating the plan to determine how realistic achieving the plan may
be. This is critical in determining whether to give a loan, how to
distribute resources throughout a company and even what initiatives
the company is willing to take part in throughout the year or in future
years.

Feasibility

The plan itself is relatively straight forward in content. Business plans

have been around long enough that there has been developed a fairly
turnkey or boilerplate template that can be followed. The feasibility in
being able to complete this one will all depend on my ability to control
content volume and not be overzealous on the formatting.
Procedure

In working through the preparation of the business report I will

complete the following steps:
1. Talk with advisors who have started practices
2. Visit the fee only planner web site to gain insight on why fee only
practices exist and look for additional resources on the
economics of running a fee only practice
3. Visit the FPA web site to look at other practice models to get a
sense of the competitive nature between the two platforms
4. Identify and utilize additional text resources for developing plan
5. Re work outline to better fit material
6. Develop statistical data for charting and graphs
7. Get images for plan
8. Work through final revision for plan design and layout
9. Draft plan and have advisor review

Having these procedures is a starting point for how I will go about

putting this plan together. I feel certain that I will encounter other
items that need to be entered into this procedural list.

Results

I am panning for the final plan to consist of at least 15 pages

containing multiple formats appropriate to the data and material being
presented. It is my hope that the final version will be of the quality
appropriate to be presented in a real economic situation such as a loan
request to a banking officer or to a group of investors. The plan will be
bound and maintain a professional layout throughout the document.

Information Resources

A lot of the information I plan to use will come from personal

experience and knowledge of the industry. I will also be utilizing
multiple books and internet sites. Some of these resources will be
listed in the tentative bibliography section of this proposal. Others will
be uncovered as I continue to research and uncover appropriate
information to support the plan.
Graphical Aids

• Data tables
• Graphs
• Charts
Will all be used to support demographic, expense, marketing and other
relevant data.
Projected Schedule

I will be following the schedule of completion as outline below:

February 16 Proposal completed, posted and emailed

March 16 Audience Analysis completed, posted and emailed

March 23 Task Analysis completed, posted and emailed

March 30 Business Plan Draft completed, posted and emailed

April 6 Final Draft of Business Plan completed, posted

and emailed

My Qualifications

The following is a list of my qualifications to complete a business plan

as my individual project:
• 15+ years as a financial planner
• 10+ years as a business consultant
• Over 50 business plans personally completed
• For the past 10 years I have completed on average 100 plans per
year
• For the past three years I have been the regional director of
financial advice, managing 550 financial planners in 3 states
• I helped one of the largest financial planning firms in the world
redesign one of the most powerful financial planning software
programs utilized by more than 60% of all financial advisors
today
• I have utilized various forms of business planning software
templates
 • I have attended and presented hundreds of business planning
presentation meetings

Projected Expenses

Binding and professional printing $20

Travel $30
Time (20 Hrs at $250 p/hr) $5000

Total $5050