A little about Guided Business Plan™
Advancing economic equality through entrepreneurship
"Easy. Simple. Guided."
Melanie Rae
Our Story
Hiking trails. Online help desk. Learn while doing.
These themes are the foundation for Guided Business Plan. Our founder Melanie Rae was introduced to hiking the hills around Los Angeles in the late 2000s around the time she came up with an idea for an online help desk for small businesses – Just Tell Me.com. That concept of having a guide “just tell me” where to go evolved into a book to make it easy to write a business plan. Before leaving a corporate job as a software trainer, she had attended a few community “how to start a business” workshops and was frustrated to have to sit in a 3-hour class to leave with 10-minutes of applicable how-to. She wrote the book that would have helped her leave with clear instructions to help others avoid the cash-strapped, windy path she took to grow her business.
So here we are, more than 10+ years later and the first GUIDED Business Plan™ book is the cornerstone of a national training platform where 10,000+ businesses have been trained.
We have printed books, e-books, digital toolkits, hundreds of presentation slides, facilitator training packages and instructional design consultation for the wave of course creators out there.
Our Partners & Supporters
Meet Our Guides
Our experts guide diverse vendors to their success destinations!
Melanie is the founder of Guided Business Plan & the Before and After Biz Coach who has helped thousands of business owners create tools to SEE and REACH their success destinations.
Melanie Rae
Lead Guide
Dr. Harris earned her doctorate in Education Leadership. She assists small businesses with writing County, State and Federal proposals.