Passing on a Lesson…
My A Ten Year Lesson article was about writing a business plan for a potential new business nearly a decade ago. I touched on some of the positives and negatives of the activities required in that plan, and that some of it is still quietly in operation today. But what I didn’t really address was the important bit – how I created it in the first place, why I should have updated it on a regular basis and what I am doing now to bring things up to date. So this is an overview touching on those three points.
General Advice…
Most business plan advice is directed toward a specific business model/type, which does not always include writing a business plan for a sole trader/individual brand. It is often aimed at businesses with funding availability, hiring plans, ready-to-go products/services with five-year revenue projections built on assumptions without justification. If you’re one person planning a solo mission — a few websites, a service business, a niche product offering — most of that is not in place, and trying to force your plan into a template built for something else is just a waste of time and provides no value.
That said, start researching and you’ll find the fundamentals are the same whether that is a 5, 7, 9 or 10 step plan. Anyhow, for what it’s worth, this is my general approach to writing a business plan as a sole trader.
Think First, Write Later…
I’ve written many business plans, of varying complexity, over the years and the easiest mistake to make is to jump in and start writing before fully thinking your ideas through. For example, you could start writing down everything you know about the market you think you are targeting only to realise later that your product/service offering is not right for that market. You can start going round in circles, because you hadn’t thought the process through.
What I found worked well was breaking the process down into 5 key stages:
- Draft the goals/objectives of your business idea and identify the foundations for making them happen (Main Headings/Sections)
- Work through a short list of basic questions (who, what, where, how) under each heading answering in note form or bullet points creating your building blocks
- Review your notes as an overall concept – validate your data sources, highlight your strengths and weaknesses, verify the opportunities and threats, look for inconsistencies or gaps to ensure it all marries up
- Complete each section in full ie expand on your notes with your further knowledge / research
- Final review – Cross-check your sections ensuring they contribute to making your goals/objectives achievable, add an implementation plan (confirming the building blocks integrate and stack-up naturally) and create a summary to focus on the highlights of the plan.
There is no pressure to add everything through steps 1 to 3 — you are just trying to capture the information you have or will need. The questions are the guide that does the hard work. The writing becomes a more straightforward task once you have a clear idea of what you are trying to achieve.
The foundations, and what to actually ask yourself…
Just as I did, ask yourself some basic questions and you can create your business plan structure – this isn’t an exhaustive list but it gives you a starting point to adapt to your own situation:
- What is my business idea? (Business Description)
– What is the main purpose for creating my business?
– What are the primary goals and objectives of my business? - What am I actually offering? (Products/Services)
– What am I selling (brief outline)?
– What does someone get that they couldn’t get elsewhere, or couldn’t get as easily? - Who is it for? (Product/Market Analysis)
– Who is this actually for — not “everyone interested in X,” but a specific, describable person or business?
– What are they doing right now instead of using what I’m offering? - How will it make money (Revenue Streams/Financial Overview)
– How will I generate income — one-off sales, recurring sales, services, ads, affiliate, something else?
– What has to be true to be able to generate this income? - What resources do I need? (Operational Plan)
– What key resources have to be in place from the start — equipment, hardware/software, additional personnel, supply contracts etc?
– What resources will I require to scale-up in the future? - What will it cost me to run (Financial Overview)
– What are the genuinely unavoidable costs, separate from the ones I’d like to have but could delay?
– What’s my actual time cost, honestly — not the version where everything goes smoothly? - How will someone find my offering (Marketing Strategy)
– What’s the primary sales channel I’m actually going to use?
– Is that channel something I can sustain alone, realistically, month after month? - What “working” looks like (Critical Success Factors)
– What are the signals that would tell me this is working?
– What is the point at which I reevaluate my position?
Most of this is common sense. That’s kind of the point — the value isn’t in asking clever questions, it’s in actually getting to grips with the basic ones before momentum carries you past them.
Past, Present and Future…
What you hopefully end up with is a clear plan on how you will make your business idea a reality – it gives you a solid starting point. And to reiterate a point from my previous article, it then becomes a measure for how well you are doing and highlights areas that need to be addressed based on your current situation. You can reevaluate and update accordingly at any time. This is what I am doing with my own plan now and I am approaching it in this exact way.
And, a couple of final points:
- Unless you are writing a business plan for external parties or partner/funding opportunities, you do not need to write a novel – detailed bullet points are sufficient providing they give you the direction you need to help you make your business a success.
- Don’t feel pressured into getting the structure exactly right. As you will find from your research, there is more than one way to approach this to achieve the end result, so settle on a process and an output that you feel helps you the most.
- Times are changing, so if you are still overwhelmed by the whole process, why not ask your AI Assistant for a little (or lot of) guidance. Or if technology is not your thing, I may be able to help. Just saying…
