Experienced investors and lenders are all too familiar with spreadsheet forecasting games. The quickest way to lose credibility is to have a reader discern that you have created an initial set of assumptions without exhaustive description and then simply extrapolated future numbers with an unsupportable growth factor. Lenders and investors tell me that this is their first “cut” to determine if the business plan is worth reading in its entirety. “Blue Sky” forecasts without a detailed description of realistic assumptions and conventions put your plan on the big stack -- the reject pile. Your plan should have a realistic, non-sugar coated SWOT analysis of the business detailing Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Your forecast must reflect both the optimal case and “Murphy’s Law,” i.e., “all that can go wrong will go wrong.”