“It all started with the promise of a 200 mpg carburetor?!?
Then a client needed a business plan to win a deal with Apple…”
Now we’ve grown into an evolving collection of guided document and financial model templates to skillfully develop the systems and structure supporting your vision, priorities, and expectations.
Level-up your hustle: Drive growth & impact.
You started your business to solve a problem. And now it’s time to go big.
Long hours and diligent work got you this far, scaling to the next level requires an edge.
We developed these tools to accelerate your business while staying true to your vision.
Our real-world systems streamline operations and drive profitability so you can focus on strategic growth.
Leverage our tools and expertise to stay ahead of the imitators and become an industry icon.
“We’re at the forefront of a greater movement to support entrepreneurs building businesses around solving humanity’s problems. We support motivated people to deliver their innovations to the world by making it easier to start, run, and build a business as their vehicle to achieve independence and success. Together with our customers and partners, I think we can improve business, society, and the human condition.”
~ Burke Franklin, Creator & CEO, Business Power Tools
We started selling these software apps through retail stores way back in 1990, today they’re evolved and integrated into a secure, collaborative online dashboard.
“It’s crucial that your innovations succeed in our world.
This means that your business must be profitable and sustainable
without you losing control, your mind, or your shirt!”
~ Burke Franklin, Creator & CEO, Business Power Tools
Building a successful business and being a mindful and responsive entrepreneur is an emotional, mental, physical and spiritual bootcamp. Yet, few things are more rewarding than succeeding with your own ideas and making a difference.
Success is hard no matter who you are or what you’re doing. We all face a multitude of ongoing issues…
Planning, Raising Capital, Hiring, Managing, Compliance, Marketing, PR, Sales…
Our idea of making the World a better place
is creating the tools you need to help
you make the World a better place!
Few can keep up, let alone know what to do, how to do it, structure it, or say it… without wasting a lot of time and cash.
Nevertheless, many things in this world need to be fixed. If you have a vision and are inspired…
And you want to make your passion your livelihood, we have the software, tools, and resources to help you build a successful business around it — one that makes a profit as well as a difference.
When you have a business issue, but don’t know how to handle it or can’t pay someone to do it for you, here’s an online toolbox full of useful documents, financial models, and know-how that you can easily use to solve your problems and build your business.
Powerful platform upgrades “old school” software apps adding intelligent processes & procedures to organize, fund, run, and scale profitable, socially conscious, and sustainable companies.
Founded by Burke Franklin, JIAN introduced the revolutionary BizPlanBuilder® in 1988.
(Full Origin Story Here)
Rated their “Best Buy” by PC World and winner of Success Magazine’s “Editor’s Choice Gold Medal Award,” BizPlanBuilder has been one of the most popular business planning software tools in the World — With more than 2,000,000 copies sold worldwide, and an estimated several BILLION dollars in capital raised through angel investors, venture capitalists, the SBA and bank financing.
New dashboard. New brand. New web address: BusinessPowerTools.com
JIAN (jee’on – a zen word meaning the “master of every art”) is a high concept that I loved and many people appreciated, but had a hard time remembering, spelling, and connecting it to the business software and templates we make.
Over the years, I’ve turned away numerous offers to buy our web domain, “jian.com,” but one offer was too hard to resist!
While we had been actively using it for 27 years, it seemed we may be better off selling it and rebranding…
JIAN is now dba: Business Power Tools
The company is still technically JIAN Tools for Sales, Inc. and we still own the trademarks, etc. on JIAN, but the response to Business Power Tools has been overwhelmingly positive!
Going forward, we will be doing business as (dba) Business Power Tools.
“Burke – Thank you for what you and those at Business Power Tools have created. I have been contracted to help a new software company get to market. I am confident BizPlanBuilder Online will play a crucial role in the staging – roll out and ongoing collaboration on the effort. I look forward to using the on-line version. Again, thanks for all you do to provide for entrepreneurs – especially – a potent capability to create, launch, grow and harvest enterprises. I believe, above all, this is what makes the USA what it is – and Business Power Tools is key. Here’s to a good job – and wealth creation!”
~ Rich O, Chief Drummer, ThinkThroughTools, LLC, (multiple BizPlanBuilder user)
Business Power Tools today.
Welcome to the future of your business
Business Power Tools is a boutique, contemporary California software creator at the forefront of rebuilding business in America and the world.
Our mission is to infuse higher consciousness into business and practices, transforming how entrepreneurs think and act as they build and run their companies – with software-driven templates that minimize mistakes and maximize success, enabling you to offer your products and services to solve real problems that progress humanity and make life better for all of us.
You can’t build the business of tomorrow on “8-track” era thinking
(What’s an “8-track”? Ha! They came before cassettes.) Anyway, the problem nowadays is that most businesses are built on documents written with the mentality of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s…
That same era that produced CheezWiz, Tang, and Twinkies!
Because this mentality was driving us nuts, we decided to take on the task of revising crucial business-building documents with current entrepreneurial emotionally intelligent mindfulness and wisdom. That mouthful means that we’re doing everything we can to make sure your crazy idea reaches the world with integrity while rewarding you for your contribution.
Vitamins for your business, pain-killers for you…
I hate it when good companies fail because people suffer. I’ve seen many great ideas crash and burn due to business ignorance and naïveté — and the world loses a beneficial innovation…
Business Power Tools offers a comprehensive and collaborative online dashboard featuring apps, docs, templates, worksheets, and videos to organize, fund, run, and scale your company.
They create synergy between business processes by simplifying and documenting them, and enabling collaboration for company-wide alignment to improve overall efficiency.
For more than 30 years, we’ve focused exclusively on developing business software and fully-scripted and formatted templates to help entrepreneurs and business owners to complete important business projects in a fraction of the time it would otherwise take to do them from scratch.
Business Power Tools products draw upon the experience of successful business professionals crossing nearly every industry and business model imaginable, as well as feedback from thousands of customers.
Every day we receive success stories and input from our customers who tell us either we’ve done it right or they offer suggestions for ways we can fix them, update them, or do it better.
I hope you like the idea of having access to an online dashboard loaded with business power tools to help you build your business!
Who is Business Power Tools for?
If you’re building a start-up and this is your first business, you have yet to appreciate everything on our dashboard; however, if this isn’t your first rodeo, I’m sure you’ll recognize the value of all these tools.
To Whom It All Makes a Difference…
No matter where you are along your path of business evolution, you’ll always find daunting things that must be accomplished or overcome. The secret is to anticipate, plan and prepare.Denial is deadly. And time is money…
Business Power Tools collapses the books, courses, and workshops into learn-as-you-create the operationally critical plans, processes, and procedures that keep your company growing.
If you’re a business advisor, you’ll find that Business Power Tools provides you a set of consistent tools to attract more clients and do more for them.
“Success is achieved by people who deeply understand reality and know how to use it to get what they want.”
~ Ray Dalio
“The Way to Become Rich is to Put All Your Eggs in One Basket, and Then Watch That Basket!”
~ Andrew Carnegie
I got mostly A’s and B’ in public school,
then I went to a private school and got all F’s!
How an Ancient History professor inspired our content quality…
For a couple of years, I went to an east-coast boarding school where we learned to write.
(The film, “Dead Poets Society” nailed it.)Wilfred T. Grenfell was a stickler for content, structure, grammar, and punctuation.
My papers were often returned with so much red ink I thought someone was murdered in his office!Mr. Grenfell scribbled all kinds of comments like…
What are you talking about?
What do you mean by that?
Give me an example!
How many?
Show me!
Prove it!
(Sounds like what you might expect from investors or the “sharks.”)I hated him at the time, but I learned to include relevant details in my writing.
You cannot BS your way through a business plan like we did back in school.
(AI seems to be proving itself as BS on steroids — not helpful.)
Investors are too smart. And they wrote papers in back in school too!This is another virtue of the secret sauce baked into Business Power Tools.
Now a business plan you’ll write with BizPlanBuilder will satisfy investors’ and lenders’ need for details.Sure, initially they may ask for a just 2-3 page summary, but before they’ll write you a check,
they’ll want to know everything you know.Mr. Grenfell would give your business plan an “A.”
Investors will give you their money much sooner.”~ Burke Franklin, creator of BizPlanBuilder
What’s a nice guy like me doing in a business like this?
On My Grandparents’ Farm
What Inspired Me to Start this Business?
(Me ~ 2008?)
Because you’re “betting the farm…”
As you may already be aware, we started this software category a long long time ago and have put a lot into it over the years, presuming our subscribers — usually entrepreneurs with business ideas that need a good explanation with a financial roadmap — are “betting the farm!”
In college I majored in engineering and business, but I was crazy to do something real…
I learned about a ‘do-it-yourself’ used car lot concept so I rented a parking lot and ran the business from my fraternity bedroom. I convinced my grandmother to loan me $5,000. (A business plan would have been helpful.) It was a great idea until it wasn’t.
During my 20’s, I sold an early software system for analyzing real estate investments, next I sold electronic components for Texas Instruments, then, at the Sharper Image Catalog I was the Electronics Buyer and later became a copywriter for the catalog…
“As a kid, I always hated explaining to my parents why I needed money to buy something I wanted — just like having to explain to an investor over and over why to invest in your project… But it’s part of business reality. So I leveraged my frustration to simplify and automate the process we must go through to convince others to back us — and I’m convinced that Business Power Tools is your best bet!”
~ Burke Franklin
Some 36+ years ago I learned about business plans. Before that I had heard little of them.
I was surprised at how many businesses owners never wrote a business plan at all…
The owner / entrepreneur had some ideas in his/her head and just went forward.
If you’ve ever worked for these people, you’ve probably also experienced a lot of screaming and frustration.
That’s not the way I wanted to build a business!
I discovered that writing a business plan actually enabled others in the business, not only to understand the big picture, but to be pro-active, make better decisions and work together to forward the action in favor of the big idea.
Then my phone rang…
a friend of mine had a deal going with Apple Computer and, before they purchased his engineering software, they wanted to see his business plan. (To make sure his company would stay in business to continue developing and supporting the system.)
The plan had to cover all the bases — the engineers wanted to review the product section, the management people wanted to know about the managers, the finance people needed to be sure that his company was sustainable, and so on.
Being a former catalog copywriter for the Sharper Image Catalog, I figured I could help him out.
From my perspective at the time, a business plan was a bit like a giant brochure. It must sell at all levels.
Long story short, he got the deal.
But it was just the beginning for me…
I kept meeting people who wanted me to help them with their business plans.
I helped write some good business plans! Standing in the shower one day, it struck me,
what if I took all of my materials I used to write a business plan, put them together into Word, Excel and PowerPoint templates and offered them on a diskette?
I ran some classified ads… “Business Plan on Diskette”
The phone rang (often at 5 am!), people loved them… I was in business!
Some friends at Apple loaned me their Mac and I started the company
with “MacBizPlan” — in my down-jacket, out in my freezing cold garage…
(Old School! Just Bill Hewlett & David Packard, Steve Wozniak & Steve Jobs)
(Later, I had an app developed for PCs.)
Since then, we’ve been listening to customers and investors, as well as using our own software ourselves to raise our own capital and lines of credit.
My philosophy behind Business Power Tools.
I thought I wanted to either get rich on something silly like a “Pet Rock” or change the world with something serious like Penicillin, but I’ve always wondered what happened to the inventions like the 200 mpg carburetor (mentioned above) featured in Popular Science and Popular Mechanics.
Perhaps the inventors and others could benefit from my business plan and the business development apps and templates.
Perhaps supporting others to introduce their solutions for our world was better leveraging of my skills and a more important contribution for me to make to the world right now.
Years later, I wrote the book, “Business Black Belt” to share my business-building observations — stuff few of the consultants, MBAs and other gurus I’ve worked with along the way ever mentioned.
With the line of business tools we are constantly developing and refining, you could say that our purpose is this:
Making tools to help you get your idea into the world where it and you can make a difference, as well as a profit and a name for yourself!
The Business Power Tools platform is part of a greater purpose.
There are many useful products and services that never make it to market (or they don’t last very long), most often due to their creators’ inexperience with the business side of business. We provide tools that help entrepreneurs and business owners do business better — so they can focus on developing their products and ideas. Who knows? Their next great idea could benefit all of us.
Over the years, we have come up with a variety of tools you can use right now to make your life a little easier and your business more productive.
Writing an excellent business or marketing plan, or a comprehensive safety manual; drafting an important agreement—these used to be boring, labor-intensive projects to be avoided at all costs. They were big, time-consuming projects that were hard to get started, difficult to do well, and sometimes impossible to finish. Frankly, I’d rather spend my time talking with customers, developing and improving our products, and have some time left to enjoy my life. But these things must be done.
I talked with friends and other entrepreneurs and discovered that I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t the only one who needed a better solution. I hated the business plans I read. I was burned out working for companies that treated employees like cattle. I was tired of reading documents I couldn’t understand without professional help.
So, I took matters into my own hands. I wrote the original BizPlanBuilder back in 1988.
Each of our subsequent products evolved out of our own needs as a growing business as well as request and suggestions from customers.
You don’t even have to learn how before you start.
By the time you read a few books, take a seminar and talk to some experts, you probably won’t have much energy left to do the job.
With Business Power Tools software, it works the other way around. By the time you’re done using our software, your project will be complete and look great.
You’ll know all you need to know about the subject as it relates to your business, without a lot of extraneous interrogation, theory, and expense.
All things considered, I think you’ll find our software tools will save your sanity as well as your time and money.
Conceived, developed, and supported in the USA.
Entrepreneurship — America’s #1 export!
- Our headquarters are in Santa Barbara, CA.
- Our web developers at Stebbins Media are in southern California.
- Our system programmers at Palm Beach Software Development are in Florida
Mark Turkel & James Wright are entrepreneurs and business owners too. They get it. - Our website is hosted WP Engine in Austin, TX
- Our Social Media is managed by Barbra Drizin of Social Media Educators in Los Gatos, CA
- When you call, you’ll speak to an American.
“JIAN software gave me back the time to run my business.”
~ Scott Brown, Summit North Marina, Bear, DE
The testimonials in blue… Are they for real?!?
Actually, yes they are. People just sent them in…
Generally, we don’t solicit comments; however, we often ask people to send us their success stories. Nevertheless, almost all of the quotes in blue text are unsolicited — comments from real people who have used our software. (All of the comments for BizPlanBuilder run more than 30 pages!) We may edit them for typos, but these are the real deal.
As you can see, some are from people who are admittedly clueless about certain business things and others are highly educated and experienced experts.
I very much appreciate the time and energy they invested in communicating with us. And we are happy to include your website URL when you send us your success story. Flame? Sure we get some of those, but we do our best to take care of people right away.
FYI, we have only ONE tech-support / customer-service person… What does that tell you?
Click here to send a success story or comment.
Try any of our products and you’ll discover feature-rich, productivity-enhancing tools to revolutionize the way you work.
“You guys are so much more on the ball than ANY OTHER software company that I have EVER dealt with.”
~ Capt. Dick Thorsen, SA
Your company-building advantage.
Everyone working with us has been a business owner or a start-up founder.
Business Power Tools’ strength is our focus on the needs of entrepreneurs like you and our own understanding of what it takes to thrive in competitive markets.
Collectively we know how little things make a big difference and we continuously work to include that wisdom into all the products we sell.
Our apps work alike and work together.
Today, all of our business software solutions offer the same ease of use and BIG TIME results without the time commitments and knowledge required by traditional software. It’s an unbeatable combination of ideas, direction, and examples you can use right now.
With Business Power Tools software, you’ll successfully complete these essential business projects in a fraction of the time it would take starting from scratch.
When you use Business Power Tools products, you’ll free up more time for other activities that will make you money. (Or enjoy life!)
We appreciate you joining us!
