How To Write A One-Page Business Plan You’ll Actually Use! - #033

Show Notes

What are the benefits of using a one-page business plan? Why are business plans so important? Turns out, there are a lot of reasons for completing a business plan for your side business as Lori Vajda and Nola Boea discovered when they used it for their own business, Sticky Brand Lab. But, perhaps the most powerful discovery they made for this very useful tool is the number of advantages the exercise in creating provided for their sales strategy.
Listen in as they share their discoveries, insights and helpful tips for completing a one-page business plan in today’s episode.

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In This Episode You’ll Learn

• How a one-page business plan actually lays out the short-term and long-term milestones that are most important to the success of your business.
• Why creating your plan actually helps you to think through and select the strategies that will propel your business and sales growth. 
• Answers the critical question of how your business will make money by helping you develop your revenue stream.
• How creating your business plan can provide you with a roadmap for your operations.

When you start a new business, if you’re like us, you’ll likely have a to-do list a mile long. Not to mention there will be far more enjoyable tasks on that list to complete than creating a one-page business plan. As Nola and Lori found out after completing theirs, the time and effort, neither of which were difficult, was well worth it, even if you don’t plan on using your business plan to find funding. As it turned out, implementing a one-page business plan helped us identify the ‘unknowns’ and made it obvious where the gaps were in our sales strategy. 

• (4:40.21) The 6 critical points creating a one-page plan clarifies for your business. 
• (6:12.41) The three different types of plans, which one you need for getting financing and which one gives you a roadmap for success. 
• (8:47.65) The 3 roadblocks that keep otherwise successful entrepreneurs from completing a business plan and the simple solution for getting it done.
• (9:45:49) Creating space for demand. Using your business plan to focus your sales ROI strategy.
• (11:45:68) The 10 foundational components of a one-page business plan.
• (14:04:49) The important and effective way to share benefits rather than features with your audience.
• (17:39:79) How to write S.M.A.R.T objectives.

Resources 

You can subscribe to Lori and Nola's show, (we love you and want to make it easy) on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

We, at Sticky Brand Lab, put together a simple but high-value template to help you create a one-page business plan. - https://www.stickybrandlab.com/resources.html

This episode was supported by: Be-YOU-nique

Transcript

​Lori: [00:00:00] For professionals, a side business, isn't just a way to make extra money. It's an opportunity to shift your career, explore entrepreneurship, offer consulting services, or develop a new skill set. In other words, a side hustle gives you the ability to direct your career and future, so you can build a life you're excited about living. And the best way to accomplish that goal is with the roadmap that's going to help you get there. And by roadmap, we mean business plan. But this isn't your grandpa's plan. This is the one-page plan. And it's the topic of today's show. 

Announcer: [00:00:34] You're listening to the Sticky Brand Lab podcast, we're time-strapped professionals like you learn how to create a business, you love in as little as three hours a week.
 
Nola: [00:00:46] Hey there, aspiring side hustlers and solopreneurs, Nola and Lori here with an amazingly useful and often overlooked business tool among side hustlers. We're talking about the business plan. But if the first thing that comes to mind is countless hours and many grueling pages to complete, we're here to tell you, forget about it.  Yup. You heard us right. Times have changed and so have business plans.  But before we show you how easy it is to use this roadmap tool for reaching your business goals, check to be sure you're subscribed to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.  This will ensure you never miss a weekly episode, as well as help other aspiring side hustlers like you find our show and create a profitable business they love.  Without delay, let's get on the road to creating a successful and profitable business. 

Lori: [00:01:32] Whether you've been told you need a business plan or not, we're here to tell you, you do. Now, you might be thinking, but Lori, Nola, business plans are time-consuming. I'm just starting out with a side business. Do I really need a business plan? Let us put it to you this way. If you were going to take a road trip across the country, you wouldn't just drive aimlessly around. Would you? Of course not. You'd use your GPS or a map to help you plan your scenic tour, or at the very least know where you're going to stop for delicious food and sleep. Well, the same holds true for your business. No matter how small or new your businesses, a business plan is your roadmap to help you organize your ideas for running a successful and profitable business. Don't let the name overwhelm you or intimidate you. You don't need an MBA to write a business plan. 

Nola: [00:02:26] Amen. In fact, the whole point about the one-page at-a-glance business plan is it's doable. 

Lori: [00:02:35] Now that being said, today's show is going to be a little bit different because we're going to use Nola, who actually does have an MBA, to help explain the one-page business plan to make it easy and digestible and actionable for listeners. So to get started, you know, we were talking about it as a GPS and it really is. Like that a business plan in general, but especially the one page. 

Nola: [00:03:05] Absolutely. A business plan, whether it's your grandpa's plan or the at-a-glance plan, it really helps you gain clarity.  It really makes you think through all the components of running your business and helps to ensure that you're really thinking through the basics.  Because, just because you know your craft, you may be an expert in your field and that's great, but you may not know the aspects of the market landscape that you probably need to know.  You might think you know it because you know your circle, but there may be more that you wouldn't know if you didn't research to complete your business plan.  And it also helps because as a roadmap, as other opportunities come up, and they will, you can have this compass to make sure that you stay the course.  I like the quote from Richard Branson that says, "Business opportunities are like buses. There's always another one coming." So having your business plan and reminding yourself of what you're doing and how you're accomplishing it, how you're going there, will help you to vet some of those opportunities.  Does this opportunity really align with what I'm doing, where I'm going, or not? And if not, well, you'll let that bus pass. 

Lori: [00:04:24] You bring up a really good point about opportunities coming about, because we didn't have a business plan when we first started our podcast. And we actually didn't develop because we only had one goal which was to launch the podcast. After we launched the podcast, it became apparent to us that there were other opportunities for both products and services that would benefit our listeners. And we had a ton of ideas and you were like, Whoa, We need a business plan now. So we actually implemented the one page. Can you talk about how that really helps you clarify how you think about your business?

Nola: [00:05:08] Sure. When you develop a business plan, what you're doing, regardless of what kind again, it documents and defines the marketplace you're getting into, how you're going to get into it, how you're going to bring exceptional value to it, how you'll address potential hurdles, and ultimately how you're going to make a profit. That's really what a business plan does. And by going through it, you're clarifying all of those points. 

Lori: [00:05:35] It was so impactful when you had us do it, that it it's helped us even change some of our messaging so that we could be more on target with the audience we thought we wanted. And then when we did the plan, there was the audience we were talking to that wasn't the same. So when you're thinking about a business plan, we've kind of alluded to the grandpa's plan, the one page, the at-a-glance. Can you kind of help explain that? And are there other types of plans? 

Nola: [00:06:10] So when we think of the grandpa's plan, we're thinking of the one that I had to do in business school. That is the 30-page, the specific format. Those are still relevant and used today, but they are the ones that are required by banks for business loans or by venture capitalists. Those are the ones that you provide with forecasting spreadsheets and all kinds of other things, for financing your business. Now the one page at a glance business plan, that's for you. You're the financer of your business and you're the driver on this road. So it is your reference point.   When I started a retreat planning company, I, I did not want to make another 30-page grandpa's business plan. I put together a one-page plan.  And it was very helpful. Because I was able to really think through all of those components. I was able to vet other potential opportunities, and it also came in handy, like I said, it wasn't something that I would have sent to a bank or a, you know, a venture capitalist. I wasn't trying to raise money.  But what I found was, when I had to get insurance, like liability insurance and trip insurance, et cetera, the insurance company said, can we please see a business plan? And I said, well, I don't have a formal plan. I have this one-page plan, but I think it has everything you need. And they took it, they read it, they asked for one point, they said, can you just tell us your payment policies, your refund policy.  I added that. And I'll state now that we've created a template of that one-page business plan. That includes that section. It's useful for me. And apparently it was useful for the insurance company as well. 

Lori: [00:07:59] You know, speaking of that, you worked on it for your business, so that you could frame your transformational retreat business, you and I working consulting with other aspiring entrepreneurs and small businesses often see that they don't have a one-page business plan because they had an idea for their product or service. They implemented it and didn't include that. And it often comes up in asking about. Well, how do you measure your success? So what are some reasons in your experience that business people, especially side business people don't put together a one page or any type of business plan for that matter? Right.

Nola: [00:08:43] Well, for one thing, they may think, like you said, it's a side business, so they may not think it's necessary.  They don't really understand the value of it.  Others think, well, it is a business they're taking it seriously. I'm going to start a business. I have no idea how to do a business plan. It's too complicated. It's too overwhelming and too intimidating. So. They don't start when they just go ahead and do what they think is right.  And just navigate as it comes.  Others, they may not feel overwhelmed, but they just say, well, you know, I don't know how to do that. And I've got things that I do know how to do, and that's what I'm going to focus on.  And so they just never get around to putting together a business plan and others, I would say they just really do not. Realize how important and how valuable it is to put together a plan, even a one page at a glance plan and how that can really change how you focus and treat your business. 

Lori: [00:09:39] Actually you brought up two exceptional points. As business owners think I have a product or I have a service. I'm just going to put it out there. And I know that I just need the customers to come in. When you had us do our one page, it became really clear how that tool changed the way. We focused sales. So selling isn't just going out there and selling there's more to it. And can you talk about that a little bit as it relates to the business plan? 

Nola: [00:10:12] Absolutely. A lot of people will say, well, I've got this product or service. I'm going to take it to market. That's all I need to do.  Well, you may not know where your audience hangs out. You may not know who your closest competitors are or how you are going to differentiate yourself.  And even if you do, how are you going to articulate that to the audience? Do you know how many sales you will need to make a profit. And when that profitability will occur there, just those kinds of details that you may not think through until you sit down and think through a business plan. 

Lori: [00:10:48] So we've talked a lot about the business plan and simplifying it, but we've talked around it. So let's shift gears and kind of go into it, 

Nola: [00:10:57] dive in. Okay. So we're going to take our listeners through first, an overview of the business plan, but what I'm going to do is I'm just going to break it down. So. The at-a-glance business plan is broken out, down into 10 basic areas.  And we have a template that actually breaks it down for you and with, for each area we've included a prompting question that you ask yourself that will help you to think through how to answer and complete that section.

Lori: [00:11:30] Which was really helpful for me when we were doing our one-page. I must say. 

[00:11:34] Yes. Yes. It was helpful. I'm glad you thought so, too. So, what I'm going to do is I'm just going to rattle off those 10 areas.  So 10 components. So there's the vision statement, mission statement, product or service, benefits versus features, unique value proposition, target, market marketing, key strategies, pricing and policies such as refunds.
So those are the 10 components. And then once you've thought those through, then what you can do is create smart objectives, which are basically objectives that will help you figure out what you're going to measure in order to know when you're successful. And we can talk more about that then. Just bite-sized action steps. What are you going to do? Three, six, 12 months to carry this forward. 

Lori: [00:12:28] You need to develop the one page that has your three months, six months, and one year is that part of it? 

Nola: [00:12:35] So you don't have a three-month business plan and a six-month business plan and 12-month business plan. It's like one page. And then at the end, it's like, this is what I'm going to do first. This is when I going to do in a little bit longer term, and this is what a longer-term action step is going to be. 

Lori: [00:12:52] But you can do the one page for the immediate, and then you can expand out. 

Nola: [00:12:57] Absolutely. That being said, I appreciate the quote from Mark Twain, who said. I didn't have time to write a short letter. So I wrote a long one. Instead 

Lori: [00:13:09] I use that quote for explaining writing content when people to try and get them to understand that doing something that is actually less work requires more thinking to be concise, and that's the same in this business plan, right? The whole point is to keep it short and concise. You could easily spend a long time and write a lot of things. And that's not what this is about. 

Nola: [00:13:33] Nope. Because making things concise forces clarity. 

Lori: [00:13:37] So we've kind of been talking about some aspects, some elements of the business plan. Should we talk in more detail and give some examples of what we mean?

Nola: [00:13:46] That's a great idea. 
Lori: [00:13:48] So let's talk about that probing question for benefits. What is that really all about? 

Nola: [00:13:55] Features versus benefits?  Your prospective customers are going to respond better to an explanation of the benefits. Rather than the features, your features, describe what is great about your product or service, while the benefits, explain what those features are going to do for them, what experience, how is it going to make their life better?  For example, let's talk about toys.  You might see a toy that has the feature listed on the packaging batteries included. That is a feature. The. Benefit is that the product is ready to use. People are going to buy it because they want a product that's ready to use. And the messaging on that product is batteries included, ready to use straight out of the box with no hassle and no disappointed children at their birthday. That helps you. Like I said when you identify your benefits, it helps you provide messaging like that. So thinking through those will inform how you're going to talk to your audience. And on a similar vein, some people will talk about, especially if it's a consulting service, people will talk about themselves. As opposed to their clients or prospective clients, it's a kind of a similar mindset. You have a certain expertise and there is a time and place to certainly tout that. And I like that, but ultimately, how will you change their life? What is it that you can do for them that solves their problem? 

Lori: [00:15:27] Excellent point, like, for example, when you were giving the messaging, an example of the benefits you combined benefits and features, actually. So if the box had ready to use batteries included, it has the messaging. It actually has the call to action, ready to use. Oh, that's true. And batteries included. And then if you were writing it in marketing material, ready to use straight out of the box with no hassle and no disappointed children on their birthday, that is very enticing because as any parent knows, getting a toy that you have to then. You don't realize batteries, aren't included. 

Nola: [00:16:05] Go make it, go make it go. 

Lori: [00:16:11] Exactly. And if you think you haven't,
I want to use your go-cart one that people often get. Stuck on and tripped up over and that's marketing, right? How are you going to acquire your customers? Because the mistake that often happens is kind of like that one in the field of dreams. If you build it, they will come. If you build a website, somehow that website is it's going to do the heavy lifting for you and get in front of all of your potential customers. And they're going to come running to you to buy your product or service, but that's not how a website works either. 

Nola: [00:16:53] No, that's absolutely right. And you see a lot of people will put a lot of time and effort and focus on making a beautiful website.  But by going through the business plan and thinking through the marketing part, you're thinking, okay, where does my audience hang out? Who are they? How am I going to get that message to them?  And how am I going to say it in their language?  How am I going to develop leads? Is it going to be networking?  How do I start with that? Do I start with what kind of organization? So there's all kinds of questions to ask that really have you think of your ideal client and where they are and how to reach them. 

Lori: [00:17:31] Really good point, because you said, how are you going to acquire customers when you use networking as an example, and you wouldn't just write networking down. And that's where the smart objectives come in. So smart actually stands for something it's not, you're either smart because you used objectives or you're not smart because you didn't use objectives. It means something else. Can you talk about that and use it in the example of networking? 

Nola: [00:18:01] I can try. It's like use this word in a sentence, but that's okay.  Having smart objectives ensure that. You're not just going to be busy for the sake of feeling busy, you're going to be productive and it's going to help you take you toward your goal. It helps you prevent from falling into a trap of perfecting your logo instead of doing the activities that will gain you customers. So smart stands for specific measurable. Attainable relevant and time-bound so specific is be precise about your objective.  Make it measurable, such as give it a number, something that you can count. Attainable. Bite-size doable, nothing too terribly grandiose.  Relevant to something that you actually have direct control over or specifically relevant to what you're doing.  Time-bound giving yourself a due date or a timeframe to accomplish it. So I would suggest picking one or two objectives for your business. Like we did quarterly. It's like for this quarter, these are our objectives. So that may be helpful.  Your suggestion was to do it in the context of let's say networking. So instead of putting my marketing plan is networking.  We want to be specific.

Lori: [00:19:13] You could say networking. And in this case you could say I'm going to attend a networking chamber of commerce meeting. I'm going to attend women focus meeting. I'm going to go to a small business meeting. Those are three networking events. Let's just say that would be the. Precise. Right. 

Nola: [00:19:32] And then measurable is I'm going to hit each of those meetings at least once in a  month period or a three-month period, whatever works for you. Attainable. Means if doing it all in a month, isn't possible, then you make a quarter. Right, 

Lori: [00:19:48] right, right. When you're having to be accountable. And that's what smart objectives do as we found out, when you have to list that you realize, am I trading time for dollars? So. You end up learning whether going to those networking events is profitable for your business or not. So if you say I'm just going to attend networking events, and then you look at the end of your measure time and you realize you either went to a bunch, but that's all that happened. You haven't completed the rest of the smart. And if you didn't go to any, you haven't done anything on smart. So if you said I'm going to these three events and I'm going to do three of them in one month, then the attainable was, yes, I could do those. And I either have more bandwidth to attend more or I couldn't attend all of them. So I have less bandwidth and I need to revise that. Right. 

Nola: [00:20:46] Which is wonderful about the, at a glance business plan, because it is revisable and that's the whole thing. You're not having to edit a 30-page document. You can pivot when you start bringing it into reality. So, yes. Excellent. 

Lori: [00:20:58] The relevant had to do with, you might enjoy going to events like networking, but you realize that you get no clients, you get no prospects, you get no leads, nothing is happening. You're just meeting people, which is fantastic, but you're not seeing anything. So you might have to. Reevaluate, whether that was a good choice to do. And that's where relevant comes in as well as time-bound because it forces you to look at your accomplishments. Are they working? So was networking a great way to attain new clients?

Nola: [00:21:37] Very good. So you can actually measure, measure this success.  I know for us, we had to keep it simple. And on our first six months of business, our main objective was to post 26 podcasts in this first six months, do or die. 

Lori: [00:21:54] Yeah. And it's not just post those. And when you realize you have to write the scripts, you have to find the guests. You have to record. Yeah, exactly. And without knowing that process, you don't realize how much time goes into something. So the one page really, really helped us think about what was a value and where we were focusing our energy. So we were getting the most out of the time that we spent 

Nola: [00:22:23] Absolutely. So on a final note, like I had mentioned earlier, the beauty of the ad at a glance plan is that your plans can change. Maybe you do catch the proverbial opportunity bus and you realize this is a really good one and it pivots your business or your focus and, and you're doing it conscientiously.  That's a great opportunity to now rethink go ask yourselves those 10 prompting questions again and make any adjustments as needed.  It's still. A roadmap.  For example, if you were to learn about road construction up ahead, or if you were going to realize that there is like a scenic detour on your trip, you would pivot your roadmap, right? And the same thing with the business plan, you can pivot it. You can readjust it with new information. And similarly, as you get feedback from your customers, or if changes take place in your industry, you can easily revise it accordingly. And you should, 

Lori: [00:23:20] It was a good example. We said at the beginning of the year, we would do our one-page business plan. And in that very first quarter, we realized midway through that, where we were focusing our attention on marketing and sales and products. Right. We were expanding out that we had lofty goals, even though they were small goals and. Midway through a different idea came to us that we hadn't anticipated, which meant we needed to focus a little bit differently. So going into our second quarter, we actually have one of our products. One of our services, which now we are implementing is the DIY website course that wasn't immediately going to be one of our services that we were going to offer. Slash products. And here we are. So we've had to revamp our plan because we had an idea that took us in a different direction. 

Nola: [00:24:20] And it was just slightly different. I mean, it was, it was something we knew we'd probably do eventually, but we found that it was relevant sooner than later. So. It just required a little bit of revision, right.

Lori: [00:24:33] And everything about that, who our target audience was, where we were going to market to get our first pilot program going in our first students, in our course, even our landing page on our website, all of those steps were included in our one-page. Well, this has been very helpful. One in sharing the benefit that we found, and we hope that it's been very beneficial to you, our listener, but one of the things that we do at the end of our podcast with our guests and we're going to do it here, there is we look at inspirational I'll quote or motto that our guests might have that relate to their business as an entrepreneur, we thought it might be useful to have an inspirational quote as it relates to business plans, Nola what's yours. 

Nola: [00:25:23] So my favorite quote, as it pertains to business planning is one by Abraham Lincoln who said, give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the ax.

Lori: [00:25:35] Yeah, which is so much like us and our ideas. We have tons of ideas. And then when we have to go write them, the axe part, 

Nola: [00:25:47] it's like, well, this is a lot more into this thing, 

Lori: [00:25:52] which then goes to mine from Eleanor Roosevelt. Is, it takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan. 

Nola: [00:26:00] There you go. If you're going to be thinking about it, you might as well be thinking in those terms, answer those 10 questions.

Lori: [00:26:08] Absolutely. So listeners, we hope that you've been inspired to create a one page plan or at a glance business plan so that you can have a roadmap to a successful side business. It doesn't have to be perfect. You don't have to have all the answers. It just as a place to start, you can download a one-page business plan template from our resource page on our website at stickybrandlab.com/resources.

Nola: [00:26:35] Be sure to come back next Tuesday and every Tuesday for another informative, inspiring and motivating episode.  And remember action creates results. So tap into your desire to create a business and brand you love by taking 1% action every day, small steps, big effects. 

Lori: [00:26:51] Do you have questions about creating a personal brand one page business plan or a side business sign up for one of our clarity sections or more information? Contact us at stickybrandlab.com/contact.

[Out-Take]

And by roadmap, we don't mean business plan. Oh yes, we do.