Business plans needn't be arduous and reams long. They can be simply one page, and here's how.
I’d like to give you an overview of one of the tools I talk about with my clients - The one-page business plan.
There’s no right or wrong when it comes to how to you plan your business decisions, or when to set your goals. It has to be a personal choice that fits with your lifestyle and how you feel about risk taking, or deadlines for example.
However, it’s always a good idea to start with a longer-term goal in mind, something feels like 10 years away, even. The idea of the 30, 60 or 90-day plan is to break down what you need to do to get there into manageable steps you can work on throughout the year(s).
This is what a one-page business plan typically looks like:
Mission or vision
Self-explanatory really, this is a few words that states what you want to achieve and by when. Think about what gets you up in the morning?
Targets
What are the targets you need to hit to help you achieve your mission, vision, goal, and objective?
Enter, the magic number five. More than five targets and you could find yourself overwhelmed with KPIs (Key Performance Indicators), fewer than five and it will simply take longer to achieve. The key aspect to this is to then consider your activities.
High Pay-Off Activities
I use this phrase a lot to get people thinking about what they do day-to-day, and whether that’s the best use of their time. Now, we start bringing each step to the forefront to get you there, so we need to consider what we should be doing each week or day. We then notice that the whole plan has turned upside down. When your mission was once at the top, we can fold down the paper and look at the activities.
Focusing on doing the things that will move you closer to your objectives will inevitably help you hit targets and achieve your mission.
Here comes the fun part, where you can write daily, weekly, monthly activities and those all-important 30, 60 or 90 day reviews into your diary or wall planner.
Delivering on our activities
Inevitably, things will change. Something crops up that you have to pay attention too, work flows ebb and, well flow… So, prepare to a little bit flexible with your plan. Review it regularly, so you can identify what’s going well and where improvements can be made. The key aspect here his to create time in our diaries for spending on our high pay-off activities to ensure of their delivery. Not only daily or weekly activities like spending time on social media or having 1:1s with your network, but that 30, 60 or 90 day review of your plan too.
Creating your one-page business plan
It’s time to put pen to paper and get planning! Remember, the idea of the one-page business plan is to really get you thinking about those high pay-off activities - what can you do to make sure your targets are met, and your mission achieved?
If you have ‘well considered’ activities, then you can in fact fold the paper in half and just focus on doing those things. If you are consistent on the delivery, then you should hit your KPI’s and targets that as a result will deliver your bigger goal or objective.
As an example, if you know your mission is to sign 12 new clients in a year, do you know what your conversion rate from proposals is? Do you know how many conversations you need to have, to generate that number of proposals? What activity will generate those conversations?
I’m here to support you on your entrepreneurial journey.
Alongside my Eventbrite webinars, I have a wealth of advice in my free business resources section of my website, and offer a free consultation to help you galvanise your business plans.
All the best - Mike
Mike Foster
The Entrepreneur's Mentor
