How to Ask ChatGPT to Write a Business Plan You Can Actually Use
Short answer: don't ask for a whole plan at once. Have ChatGPT interview you first (one question at a time), confirm what it understood, and then write a one-page plan section by section. Label every number as your input or as an assumption. That turns a generic template into a plan based on your business.
Why "write me a business plan" fails
ChatGPT doesn't know your customer, prices, costs, or goals, so it fills 10 pages with industry boilerplate and made-up market numbers.
Let it interview you first
Before:
write a business plan for my dog grooming business
After:
I want a 1-page business plan for [a mobile dog-grooming van in Austin]. Before you write anything, ask me up to 8 questions, one at a time, about my customer, pricing, costs, competition, and goals. Wait for each answer. Then summarize what you understood in 5 bullets and ask me to confirm. Then write: Problem / Customer / Offer & pricing / How customers find us / Costs & break-even / First 90 days / Risks. Rules: Label every number "mine" or "assumption." Never invent market statistics; say "research needed" instead.
Why it works: the interview collects the facts only you know, the confirm step catches misunderstandings early, and labeling numbers keeps the plan honest.
Coming soon: the free SoloShot Prompt Translator, with a clarifying-questions mode that asks these questions for you.
Then stress-test it
Act as a skeptical small-business lender. List the 5 weakest assumptions in this plan and what evidence would convince you.
Do the numbers properly
Build a simple break-even table: fixed costs per month, price per service, variable cost per service, services needed per month to break even. Show your formulas.
Section prompts
- Pricing: "Suggest 3 pricing models for [offer], with the tradeoffs of each for my customer."
- Marketing: "List 10 low-cost ways to get the first 20 customers for [business] in [city], ranked by effort."
- Executive summary: write this last. "Summarize the plan in 120 words for [a lender / a partner]."
FAQ
Is an AI business plan good enough for a bank? Use it as a draft. Lenders want real numbers, so check every figure and get local advice. One page or full plan? Start with one page. Expand only the sections your reader actually needs.