Biz + Websites | Updated Oct 18
how to Create a business plan
By the end of this post, you'll have your own customized business plan ready to go. Let's dive in.
Creating a business plan is super important to the success of your business ventures. I don't care how organized you think you are, if you don't have a plan, you just will not make the same progress!
To stay on track with your business, you need to know where you're at and where you're going. I get distracted a lot, especially when trying to achieve something new and difficult. But having a plan helps me navigate through that distraction and come back when I've wandered off.
Now it may feel overwhelming and you may not know where to start in creating your own business plan, so I put together this step-by-step guide that makes it pretty simple. Just follow along!
To create a business plan, I like to break it up into 5 steps: branding, assessing, defining, strategizing, and implementing.
You can grab a couple sheets of paper or a notebook and walk through the process with me, or you can get my Business Plan Bundle that I designed to start and grow my own business. Either way, by the end of this post you'll have your own business plan ready to go.
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Branding
Let's start out with branding. This is where we will define your brand overall. Generally, branding can include a lot more than what I've put in this section. For instance, you can dive deeper into things like colors, fonts, verbiage, tone of voice, and audience. You can definitely go into all of those categories here if you'd like, however, I prefer to organize my business plan a little differently.
2. Dream. Next, write out your dream for the business. Dream big. Be detailed. What would be your ultimate dream for this business, if the sky was the limit? Now consolidate all of that down into one sentence.
4. Brand Description. Finally, write your brand description. As concisely as possible, summarize who you are as a business, what your business is, and what you do.
Assessing
Step 2 is to take a realistic assessment of your business to give you insight and help you strategize later on.
1. Strengths. What are your business's unique strengths? What makes you stand out to customers amongst your competitors? These are areas that you should really focus on and lean into.
2. Weaknesses. Conversely, what are your business's unique weaknesses? Be honest. Being aware of your weaknesses is one of the best ways you can add security to your business. It's when we ignore those things that we may set ourselves up for failure. That's not to say you should focus on your weaknesses, but you should remain aware of them.
3. Opportunity. Where do you see opportunity for your business? What are opportunities that you're focusing on now, and what are some possible opportunities for the near and distant future?
4. Threats. What are some threats for your business? What could "make it or break it"? Again, we need to be aware of these things and not ignore them, or else they could jeopardize the business later on. Once you have these assessed and written down, you'll be able to strategize clearly and make strong moves later on.
Defining
Up next, we need to define your business as clearly as possible. Here we will go into some more of those details that some people include in their branding section.
1. Products. What products or services do you provide? Be detailed. Create a clear-cut list with names and descriptions of each product or service that you offer.
2. Audience. To whom do you provide these products? Who is your ideal client? Who would want or need what you offer? Who is your target audience? One of the most important things you can do to become successful in any business is to be as specific as possible while defining your audience.
If you want to go deeper, you can even create a persona representing your audience. You can name this persona, choose a picture that represents them, define their likes and dislikes, problems they face, and how they feel. All of your tones and messaging should be directed toward this ideal client.
3. Problems. What problems does your business solve and how does it solve them? Again, be very detailed. Perhaps you solve many problems with one or multiple products.
An important business strategy is to lean into the emotions of your ideal client here when working on solving their problems. How does your product make them feel? How did they feel before your product helped them?
Strategizing
Let's get into planning and strategizing. We are going to focus on your marketing and sales plans here, and then in the next section we'll look at how to execute, or implement, all of the information that we have put together thus far.
2. Marketing Materials. Now you need to decide what materials you will use to market your business, or to get your business out there. Will you DIY or hire a pro? Will you use photos, videos, and/or copy? Make these decisions and write them down.
It's also ok to simultaneously make a short-term plan and a long-term plan. Or maybe you just start with what you're ready to do now, and then you can reassess your plan later and change it as needed.
Fiverr is a great place to find pros at a good price. You can get photos and videos made and copy written for you, and pretty much anything you can think of! If you're going super-budget like me, Canva is a great place to create your own content for free. If you've never used it before, it could take a little time to get used to, but it'll get easier with practice.
3. Pricing Strategy. Up next you need to decide how you will price your goods or services that you sell. Think about how you are determining that price. Is there a certain formula you're using? Also think about if you will ever offer sales or deals. How about offering coupons or incentives? Lastly, do you plan to increase your rates at a certain point?
Answering all of these questions can help you have a clear path moving forward. Remember, you should be writing these things down on your paper as you go, so you're formulating a plan of action.
4. Distribution channels. Now determine how your services or goods will be distributed to the customer. For example, if you provide physical products, will you partner with various stores to distribute them? Or will you be shipping out your own products from your home?
Maybe you only distribute your product virtually. If you're a coach, will you do in-person coaching or just virtual? Thinking along these lines will help you to determine your distribution channels.
Every business-type will have different options available to them, and every business will be unique in the end. Make sure you're defining these important factors so that you have a clear path forward.
Implementing
We've made it to the final step in creating your business plan! This is where the magic happens, because this is the part that will help you follow through with your business and get it moving.
There are two strategies I use to ensure follow-through on my business plans: monthly planning and project planning. For me, projects can take longer than a month, and I can be working on more than one project at a time. That's why it helps to separate these different types of plans and understand how to use them together.
By now you already have an overall outline of your business that will help you determine what it is and what your strategies are, but in order to carry it out, you need action-plans that will keep your on track to your goals. Let's start with monthly planning.
Monthly Planning
To keep on top of your business, it's important to continually reassess and plan. The way I do this is by making a fresh plan each month tailored to the specific project(s) I'm working on and the specific tasks I need to get done that month.
This is not the same as the main business plan, and does not replace it. Instead, this breaks it up so you can see what specific actions you should be taking that month. Follow the steps below to create your monthly plan at the start of each month.
1. Make SMART goals. Start by making "SMART" goals for the month. I write 5 smart goals into my monthly plan. This helps me prioritize the most important ones.
Often I have a lot more to do than just 5 action steps, so to get everything off my mind and onto paper, I flip my page over and write out an extensive list. Those are all the smart goals that need to be done, but then I choose the top 5 priorities and write those again on the front side of the paper. If I finish my top 5, I can come back and do more from the long list.
2. Acknowledge Success. Acknowledge your successes from the previous month. I try to come up with at least 3, and I write them down on my monthly plan sheet. Even if they're small successes, it creates momentum for you to realize you actually are moving forward.
3. Keep Notes. Have a designated square on your monthly plan where you can keep notes throughout the month. That helps me remember important things I think of and need to come back to, but that I don't have time for right then. This helps me remember and also not have to worry about those things until I'm ready to come back to them.
4. Consistency. I usually do my monthly planning in the last few days of each month so that my new plan is ready to go on the 1st of the month. I actually look forward to it now because it helps me see my progress and get motivated for the month ahead.
5. Keep writing out your dream for your business on each month's plan to keep it fresh in your mind and keep you motivated.
Remember in the first section of this post I told you to write out your ultimate dream for your business? I want you to summarize it into one concise sentence and then rewrite it each and every month on your monthly plan. Preferably, rewrite it by hand each time, which will help to keep it running through your mind. If you're typing your plans, consider saying your dream out loud each month as your doing your planning.
6. Adjust. Take this time to cross off any tasks you have now completed from previous months' plans. Simultaneously, feel free to adjust your plan as needed. Don't stay tied to what is no longer serving your business.
If you're anything like me, you may be learning this business stuff as you go. My business is ever-evolving because I am continuously learning. And if I didn't give myself the chance to update and adjust my business plans each month, I would end up dropping the whole business and become disinterested.
Instead, by allowing myself to work-in adjustments as I learn and grow, I'm able to keep myself on track and motivated. So don't be afraid to adjust your plans as you go.
Project Planning
The monthly plans we just went over will help you keep your business on track overall. But, many businesses will also have at least one project going on. Sometimes you may be working on multiple projects at once, and each one can sometimes take much longer than one month.
Project planning will help you to execute individual projects and complete them successfully. Remember, you don't need to do multiple projects at once. If you can focus on just one at a time, you may see better success rates. But still, many businesses find that they need to do multiple projects at once. That's ok too.
Let's jump in to my top tips for creating effective project-specific plans.
1. Define. Be sure to define your project well and be as specific as possible. As I mentioned above, the more focused you are on one thing, the more likely you will be to succeed. If you're all over the place or your project is not well defined, it will likely be difficult to complete it.
If you have a lot going on in your project, consider separating it out into multiple projects to make things clearer. It's better to have multiple projects going on at once, than to have a single project that is disorganized and overloaded.
2. Resources. Write down any relevant resources that you are using, and any others that you have come across that could be helpful. It can be hard to remember these things down the road and end up frustrating or delaying your progress. Keeping all these things in one place helps! Write down any resources you've heard of or briefly seen but haven't been able to look into yet.
3. Milestones. Write specific and measurable milestones that you'll achieve along the way to completing your project. Measureable means it's finite and will not be up for interpretation as to whether or not you've achieved it. For example, "Make $1,000 in one calendar month." is a specific and measurable milestone, but "make enough money" is vague and up for interpretation.
Writing down future milestones for the project, and keeping them measurable will help you see when you're making progress. It will also increase your motivation to continue forward. Be careful, because making milestones vague could have the opposite effect and discourage you later on.
4. Actions. Write out all the specific actions you must take to complete your project. Break these down into bite-sized tasks and just start with the 10 most immediate ones you can think of. If you want to make your list more extensive, that's fine. Otherwise, when you've made some progress, you can add more.
You can also reassess these each month to cross off what you've completed and add more. And you can use these actions steps to fill in your 5 SMART goals in your monthly plan.
5. Timeline. Create a timeline by adding target dates of when you would like to have reached each of your milestones. Additionally, add target completion dates next to each action step.
6. Reassess. Make sure you come back and write in the dates of when you actually did complete each of your action steps and milestones. This will help you see your progress and understand what's working and not working. And if you're like me, it will help you keep up your motivation to keep going!
Also, come back and reassess your project plan regularly. If it needs a major refresh, start with a new page and update it. Don't tie yourself to a plan you no longer want to do, or else you may end up falling off.
Summary
By now you should have a full and detailed business plan, ready to put into action! Remember, if may feel a little foreign and even tedious doing it the first time, but the more you do it the easier it'll get. Plus, you may even come to enjoy your planning sessions like I have over time, and gain a lot of insight and motivation from it!
Either way, stick with it because it's definitely worth it. I know your business will be able to grow a lot easier with good plans in place.
You're doing great and I wish you the best of luck in your business endeavors.
Grab your lifetime access to the Business Plan Bundle I designed to get my business going and growing here:
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