Mark H. Brennan, president of Las Vegas Coffee Investors LLC has developed this great model to balance projected revenue and costs against real world performance.

The original download is located at this link from the Kauffman Foundation bootstapping resource page. Use Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Spreadsheet to read the document once you've downloaded it to a file or your desktop.

Whether done by the day, by the week, by the month or by the year, the tool will help you do the same kind of reality checks recommended by Bill Clark of The Baby Einstein Company.

A word of caution though. It will not help you make realistic projections before you've even put your product on the market, especially if the business or service you've launched offers something completely different where no historical data exists.

The best of all reasons to use a bootstrapping approach when launching your business with existing funds or resources instead of taking outside investment on projections that may or may not turn out to be correct a year or two down the road.