The one-page plan: a strategy small businesses will actually use
Long business plans gather dust. A single page that answers five questions gets read, argued over and updated.
When people hear “business plan”, they imagine a forty-page document written for a bank. For running a small business day to day, a single page is far more useful.
The aim is clarity. If you cannot explain your plan on one page, it is probably not clear in your head either.
The five questions
Divide a page into five boxes and answer each in a few lines.
- Who is our customer? Be specific. “Local homeowners aged 40 to 65 who want a reliable plumber” is more helpful than “everyone”.
- What problem do we solve, and why do they choose us? Think about price, speed, quality or trust. What would they say if you asked them?
- How do we reach them? List the two or three channels that bring in most of your customers, such as referrals, search, social media or local partnerships.
- How do we make money? Note your prices, your main costs and roughly what is left over per sale.
- What are our priorities for the next 90 days? Pick no more than three. Anything else waits.
Add a few numbers
Alongside the five answers, write down the handful of numbers that tell you whether the business is healthy:
- monthly revenue and costs,
- cash in the bank and how many months of costs it covers,
- the number of new customers per month and what each one costs to win.
Keep it alive
A plan only helps if you use it. Pin it where you work, review it for fifteen minutes at the start of each month, and cross out what is no longer true. If a major decision comes up, check it against the page: does it help the customer you chose, using the channels you chose?
When you need more
If you are applying for a loan or seeking investment, you will need a longer document with forecasts. The one-page plan is still the best place to start, because the long version should simply expand on it.
