# Can ChatGPT help you write a business plan?

Date: 2022-12-30 · Author: Robert Scales · https://guidetoartificialintelligence.com/en/learn/chatgpt-help-write-business-plan/

**Answer:** Yes, for structure and first drafts: ChatGPT can propose an outline, ask you useful questions and turn your notes into readable sections. It cannot supply real market data, costs or forecasts, so every number in the plan has to come from your own research and records.

A business plan is a document that explains what a business will do, who its customers are, how it will reach them and how the money is expected to work. Banks, investors and grant programs often ask for one, and writing it forces an owner to think through decisions they might otherwise put off. It is also a long document with a fairly standard structure, which makes it a natural task to try with ChatGPT.

The useful way to think about it: ChatGPT is good at the parts of a plan that are about language and organization, and unreliable at the parts that are about facts. It can describe a café's concept in clear prose. It cannot tell you how many people walk past your corner each morning, what rent costs on your street or how many coffees you will sell in March.

## Why the numbers can't come from the chatbot

ChatGPT has no access to current information. The Verge's first-week review notes that its interface warns of limited knowledge of the world after 2021, and that the bot often presents invented information confidently as fact. OpenAI's launch post adds that it can write answers that sound plausible but are wrong, and that when a request is ambiguous it tends to guess rather than ask. Put those together and a request such as "estimate my café's first-year revenue" produces a tidy figure with nothing behind it.

OpenAI's terms of use, updated December 13, are clear on the same point in their own language: the service comes "as is", without any promise that it is accurate. Anything in a business plan that a lender or partner will rely on needs a source you can name.

## A worked example: outline first, then one section at a time

Suppose you plan a small café near a college campus. Start by asking for the skeleton, not the whole plan:

```prompt
I am planning a small café, about 30 seats, near a college campus. Coffee, pastries from a local bakery, simple lunches.

Give me an outline for a business plan with the usual sections. Under each section, list the questions I need to answer to write it. Do not write the sections yet, and do not invent any numbers.
```

An illustrative outline would include an executive summary, the business concept, a market analysis, competition, marketing, operations, management, and a financial plan. The questions under each heading are the valuable part: they become your research to-do list.

Next, write one section at a time, giving it your own notes and telling it where facts are missing:

```prompt
Write the "Market analysis" section, about 250 words, using only my notes below. Wherever a fact or number is needed that is not in my notes, insert [DATA NEEDED: description] instead of guessing.

My notes:
- Campus has a large student and staff population (I am getting the exact figure from the college).
- Two coffee chains within a 10-minute walk; no independent café on our block.
- Students tell me they want a quiet place to study with good Wi-Fi.
- Busy months follow the academic calendar; summer is slow.
```

An illustrative draft would describe the student market and the study-space gap in readable paragraphs, with placeholders such as [DATA NEEDED: number of students and staff on campus] and [DATA NEEDED: daily foot traffic past the location]. Those markers are the point. They show exactly where the writing ends and the research begins.

Work through the remaining sections the same way, then ask for an executive summary last, once the rest exists. Keep sensitive figures, such as your savings or a landlord's offer, out of the chat; the terms say OpenAI may use submitted content to improve its services. You can type the real numbers into your own copy afterward.

> **Try it:** Pick a business idea, yours or a friend's, and ask ChatGPT for an outline with questions under each heading, as above. Choose one section, write five lines of real notes, and ask for a draft with [DATA NEEDED] markers. Count the markers: that is your research list.

## Making the draft your own

Once the sections exist, use ChatGPT as an editor rather than an author. Ask it to point out where the plan contradicts itself, where a reader might have questions, or where the language is vague. Ask it to argue against your marketing section as a skeptical lender would. Then rewrite in your own voice. A plan that sounds like every other plan is easy to set aside; one written by someone who clearly knows their street and their customers is not.

## Which sections still need your own numbers?

Nearly all the sections that a lender reads closely. The **market analysis** needs real figures on your customers: the size of the population you serve, foot traffic and how it changes through the year. The **competition** section needs facts about nearby businesses, their prices and hours, gathered by visiting and asking. The **operations** section needs your actual rent, staffing plan and supplier prices.

The **financial plan** is entirely yours: start-up costs, prices and the cost of each item you sell, a sales forecast, a cash-flow projection month by month, and the point at which income covers costs, often called the break-even point. ChatGPT can explain what each of these terms means and suggest how to lay out a table, which is genuinely helpful if you have never built one. The figures inside it must come from quotes, invoices, leases and your own estimates, ideally reviewed with an accountant or a small-business advisor.

A simple rule keeps the plan honest: every number should have a source you could name if someone asked, whether that is a supplier quote, a census table or your own count of people walking past at 8 a.m. If the only source is "ChatGPT said so," it does not belong in the plan yet.

## Sources

- ChatGPT: Optimizing Language Models for Dialogue: https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/
- OpenAI’s new chatbot can explain code and write sitcom scripts but is still easily tricked: https://www.theverge.com/23488017/openai-chatbot-chatgpt-ai-examples-web-demo
- Terms of Use (last modified December 13, 2022): https://openai.com/terms/