Summary
Let's Talk Business Plans is an educational blog built by a team of writers, consultants, and business educators. Founded by Jim Cothers — a business consultant with 20+ years of experience in corporate strategy and financial planning — the site gives entrepreneurs the knowledge they need to write strong business plans, build pitch decks, and secure funding. Every article is researched, fact-checked, and written in plain English so you can actually use what you read.
Who We Are
We are a small editorial team that writes about business planning because we think every entrepreneur deserves access to clear, practical guidance. Too many business plan resources are either locked behind expensive consulting fees or buried in academic language. We wanted to build something different — a blog that explains things the way you'd explain them to a friend over coffee.
Our Team
Our writers and editors come from backgrounds in business consulting, financial analysis, startup operations, and technical writing. Each article goes through a research and editorial process that includes source verification, readability checks, and review by subject-matter experts. We don't publish content we wouldn't stake our own reputation on.
Meet the Founder: Jim Cothern
Jim Cothern started Let's Talk Business Plans after two decades of helping entrepreneurs write business plans, build financial models, and prepare pitch decks. He saw the same problems over and over: talented founders who had great ideas but struggled to put them on paper in a way that banks and investors wanted to see.
Why He Started This Blog
After years of one-on-one consulting, Jim realized he could only help so many people at a time. The blog was his way of scaling that knowledge — taking the same frameworks, templates, and strategies he used with clients and making them available to everyone. His goal was simple: if someone is willing to put in the work, they shouldn't be held back just because they can't afford a consultant.
His Background
Jim has worked across corporate strategy, training, and business development for over 20 years. He has helped entrepreneurs across dozens of industries — from food service to fintech — develop plans that secured SBA loans, angel investments, venture capital, and grant funding. He holds expertise in financial modeling, market analysis, and pitch deck development.
What We Cover
Our content covers the full lifecycle of business planning. Whether you are writing your first business plan or updating one for a Series A raise, we have guides built for your stage.
Core Topics
We publish in-depth guides on business plan structure, executive summaries, financial projections, market research, competitor analysis, pitch decks, funding strategies, and industry-specific planning. We also cover practical topics like how to present to investors, how to update your plan after launch, and how different lenders evaluate your application.
How We Research
Every article starts with a research phase. Our team reviews current data, consults authoritative sources, and cross-references claims before writing. We cite our sources so you can verify the information yourself. When regulations, market conditions, or best practices change, we update our articles to reflect the latest information.
How We Research, Write, and Publish
We're transparent about how our content is made, because the people reading it use what they learn here to make real financial decisions — and they deserve to know what's behind the words. Our editorial process is a system, not a newsroom. We've built a workflow that combines human-set editorial standards with AI-assisted research and drafting, enforced by automated quality gates at every step. Here's what each stage actually does.
Topic Selection
Our editorial team chooses topics based on what entrepreneurs actually ask — questions from real founders, gaps in the public guidance, and trends in business formation. AI doesn't pick what we cover.
Research
Every article is researched against authoritative primary sources, including the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA), the IRS, the FDIC, Nolo, and established business publications. Every factual claim links to its primary source. AI tools help synthesize the research; the sourcing rules are set by us and enforced by our quality gates.
Drafting
We use AI tools to draft articles — the way modern publishers use templates, style guides, and editing software. AI does not choose our topics, set our standards, or decide what gets published.
Quality Review
Before any article publishes, it must pass automated quality gates we built — a minimum citation count, sourcing checks, readability and structure review, and a quality score threshold. Articles that don't pass do not appear on the site. This review is systematic, not subjective: every article is held to the same standards.
Editorial Accountability
James Crothers designed this editorial system and is accountable for the standards every article must meet. He doesn't personally read every article before it publishes — that wouldn't scale honestly with the volume we produce — but the standards he sets, and the quality gates that enforce them, govern every piece on this site. When something falls short, fixing it is his responsibility. If you spot a factual issue with any article, please contact us — we correct quickly. See our full editorial standards for more.
Our Editorial Standards
We hold ourselves to a high bar because we know people make real financial decisions based on what they read here. A business plan built on bad advice can cost someone their savings, their loan approval, or their shot at funding.
What Every Article Goes Through
Each article goes through a multi-step editorial review before publication. We check source credibility, factual accuracy, readability, and overall quality. Articles that don't meet our standards get revised until they do. We write our content to make it easy to read, understand, and implement because the best advice in the world is useless if people can't act on it.
Corrections and Updates
If we get something wrong, we fix it. Our team regularly reviews published content for accuracy and freshness. When industries change, regulations update, or we receive reader feedback, we revise articles and note the update. We'd rather correct a mistake publicly than let bad information stand.
Why We Do This
Business planning is not glamorous. It is not the part of entrepreneurship that gets celebrated on social media. But it is the part that separates the businesses that survive from the ones that don't. We believe that access to clear, honest business education can change outcomes for real people.
Our Promise
We will always keep our content free and accessible. We will always prioritize accuracy over speed. We will always write for the person who is sitting at their kitchen table trying to figure out how to turn an idea into a real business. That is who we built this for, and that is who we will keep building for.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, this isn’t just about business plans—it’s about building knowledge, confidence, and the ability to move forward with purpose. A plan is only as powerful as the understanding behind it, and that’s where real growth happens. Our goal is to make sure you don’t just follow a process, but truly learn it—so you can adapt, evolve, and keep building long after you’re done here. Because when you understand what you’re doing and why, you’re not just prepared—you’re empowered.