The One Page Business Plan.

Today I will be talking about the one-page business plan, a document that will guide you and serve as your reference point in starting a Home Based Business. Most people will say it doesn’t matter, why write a business plan? after all it’s a small business, a home-based one at that here is why it matters

Why you need a Business Plan:

-It helps you concretize your ideas and gives a big picture of where you want to go.

-Assists you to itemize what you need to be doing per time.

-The business plan gives you the opportunity to identify who your customers are and how you intend to reach them hence helping you define your niche.

-It gives you an idea of your market size and how many portions of that market you can get, thereby determining your market size.

– Helps you to determine your startup costs and your breakeven point thereby indicating when you start turning a profit.

-Finally, it helps give you a sense of what you expect your income to be and what to price your products.

Having listed the above reasons, here is a description of the one-page business plan and what it contains;

Before I go ahead, a disclosure, I got this template from another Blog the 100startup.com by Chris Guillebeau who is the author of the $100 dollar startup a book that chronicles interviews on people who started a business with 100 dollars or less.

I am acknowledging what the owner did by allowing me to download from his site. I will only modify some aspects of the template and use it. Having said that let’s get to it.

The one-page business plan is a simple template that makes it easy for anyone willing to start up a home business to jump right in and start. If you want the template you will get it right after the post series finishes.

The template requires that you write whatever you need in the business plan in two short sentences, it’s like the elevator pitch of your Home Business. It’s often said that if you can’t summarize your business plan to an investor in the time it takes for you to ride an elevator from one floor to another then you haven’t figured out what you should be doing. In other words, cut the crap out and get to the meat of the Matter.

The one-page business plan is divided into 5 different parts namely: The overview, Ka-ching, hustle, success and obstacles/ challenges. I will start by treating the first 2 in this post, in my next post I will deal with the remaining 3.

 

Components of the one-page business Plan

Overview

-What will you be selling? What products or services will you be selling to people, before you go into business, you have got to figure out what you need to be selling? What is your idea about and what do you intend to offer to people. In the technology world, the word will be what your minimum viable product is.

-Who will buy your products? In other words, who are your customers, you have to define who will be buying your products as this will help in planning your marketing efforts.  For example, we all know that kids love to ride bicycles, but they do not have buying power, so we target our marketing efforts to places where kids and parents share a common interest. The reason is to get the kids interested enough to nag mom to buy.

-How will your business idea help people? Your business idea should be designed to help people so you have to figure out what help your business provides to the people who will be buying it. In other words, what problem does it solve, what solution does it bring? In business parlance, it is called a value proposition. It makes no sense to start a business that does not provide Value.

Ka-ching

In this aspect, we will talk about how your business intends to make money. It will make no sense to start a business that cannot fund itself and does not pay your bills. The main reason why it’s called a business is that it’s supposed to make money.

A business that does not make money is not a business, it’s an NGO or best put an expensive hobby- ouch, hope that doesn’t hurt too much. If you have a business that is not making money then consider this your wake up call.

-How will you Bill your customers; How will you bill your customers, are your products going to be  “pay as you go”? or will you collect at the end of the month, will it be subscription based or a one-off charge. These are issues you need to consider.

-What will you Bill your customers: what is the price point for your products, for instance, if you are a baker who wants to sell confectionaries, what will be the price of your goods. How you price your goods will determine if you will cover your costs and turn a profit.

-Cost of Producing one unit: Work out how much it costs to get your products or service to your consumer, this will enable you to appropriate the necessary price for your products.

This is the reason why it’s important to ensure you record down every expense you make when starting a business as it enables you to know when you have covered your costs of startup and begin to make a profit.

-How else will you generate income from this business: In this part, you are to list the income streams for your business, how many ways will you be making money from this business. You can even go as far as proportioning how much you hope to make from each stream of income.

Thank you for taking the time to read our post today, keep a date for the conclusion of this post so you can get the one-page template I promised you.

Remember all the knowledge in this world will mean nothing if you refuse to take action, therefore After reading this post it’s time to do what?——————- Take action!!!!!!

To Do:

Take up a pen and outline the points I noted above, begin to put down two short sentences about what we just discussed. I will also be putting mine into action. In my next post after the conclusion of this post, I will share my own one-page business plan.