1 page business plan template
Having a road map helps you reach your journey's end successfully. Business plans do the same for small businesses. They lay out the milestones you need to reach on your way to building a profitable small business. From finance to marketing, operations to sales, each part of a business plan helps you reach your goals.
Business Plan Template for a Startup Business
Having a road map helps you reach your journey's end successfully. Business plans do the same for small businesses. They lay out the milestones you need to reach on your way to building a profitable small business. From finance to marketing, operations to sales, each part of a business plan helps you reach your goals.
What deters most entrepreneurs from creating a business plan, however, is taking the time to write it all out. Many are afraid to do so; they'll find their idea isn't so brilliant after all. For those who take the time to research and write a plan, though, they often find that it helps them identify risks and possible roadblocks.
Business plans are essential to identifying and overcoming obstacles on your path so you can build a successful company. While writing a business plan can be frustrating especially when you're writing one from scratch, there are plenty of online templates available to take some of the pain out of the process. Small business owners can benefit from simple, easy-to-follow business plan tools so they spend less time writing and more time launching. Here is our simple business plan template, plus eight resources to help you craft a professional business plan quickly and easily.
The executive summary is arguably the most important section of a business plan, because it needs to draw your readers into your plan and entice them to continue reading. If your executive summary doesn't capture the reader's attention, they won't read further. Even though it is the first section, you should write it last. This section is an overview of your entire business. Make sure you include basic information, such as when your company was founded, what kind of business entity it is, what state it is registered in, etc.
Provide a summary of your company's history to give the readers a solid understanding of who you are and what your business is. Focus on your customers' perspective and needs by demonstrating the problem you are trying to solve. The goal with this section is to prove your business fills a market need and will remain viable for the foreseeable future.
In this section, clearly define who your target audience is, where you will find them, how you will reach them and, most importantly, how you will deliver your product or service to them.
Provide a deep analysis of your ideal customer and how your business provides a solution for them. You'll also want to include your competitors in this section and illustrate how your business is different. What are their strengths and weaknesses, and how will you differentiate yourself from the pack? Before anyone will invest in your business, they want a complete understanding of whom they are investing in. This section should illustrate how your business is organized. As you list each individual, provide a summary of their experience and their role within your company.
Treat this section as a series of mini resumes and consider appending full-length resumes to your business plan. Last, the financial plan should include a detailed overview of your finances. At the very least, you should include cash flow statements as well as your profit and loss projections over the next three to five years. You can also include historical financial data from the past few years, your sales forecast, balance sheet, etc. Make sure this section is precise and accurate.
It's often best practice to create this section with a professional accountant. Finally, if you're seeking outside funding for your business, highlight why you're seeking financing options, where that money will go and when investors can expect a return on their investment.
LivePlan has become a recognized online business tools resource to help budding entrepreneurs every step of the way, from the planning stages to launch. Like other services, LivePlan allows business owners to craft perfectly formatted plans. They have more than plans encompassing nearly every industry you can think of. After selecting the template you like, you can tweak, customize and create the presentation to pitch your idea to would-be investors. Post-launch, businesses can track revenue and expenses against forecasts.
Perhaps you've heard about entrepreneurs who jotted down their business idea on a napkin at a bar. Designed for entrepreneurs who are itching to get started, this simple business plan template asks a handful of questions that you can answer in one or two sentences.
The plan covers everything from what you plan to sell and who will buy it to how you will get paid, "hustle" to find customers, foresee challenges, and overcome obstacles in a single page. Bizplan lets you create a business plan for free using your smartphone or tablet, and it offers more than just business plans.
You also have access to free pitch script templates, marketing tools, coaching and collaboration features. You can upgrade to paid plans that give you access to more tools, tutorials and other features. Not all small businesses are concerned with credit lines, partnerships and office space — at least not in the beginning. So why should their initial business plans include these things? Copyblogger's Remarkably Simple Business Plan doesn't. Instead, it offers a business plan template fit for the real would-be entrepreneur.
Where most templates assume all businesses are uniform, Copyblogger's model is designed to get to the heart of what entrepreneurs need to know to start a business: the ins and outs of the product or service, how customers will find the business and how the business will make money. Simply copy and paste the template, created by Sonia Simone, co-founder and chief content officer of Copyblogger Media, and you're good to go.
Financials are often the most confusing and difficult aspect of a business plan for new business owners. Founded in , Enloop is regarded as an innovative player in the business-plan-creation industry. Like other services, Enloop uses an online interface to automate the creation of your business plan.
To get started, users enter basic information about their businesses, including product details. From there, Enloop's software uses metrics to predict the financial performance of the company compared with similar companies in the same sector. Enloop's goal is to help entrepreneurs make better-informed decisions. Here's how! Created by The One Page Business Plan Company , this simple template covers only the key areas entrepreneurs need to address to start a business: their vision for the company, why the business exists, objectives for setting goals, strategies to make the business successful and action plans indicating what work needs to be done.
Unlike complicated business plans, boring blocks of text are not required — bullet points will do. Greg Go, co-founder of online finance community Wise Bread , is a big believer that entrepreneurs who are just starting out don't need lengthy business plans. What they need, says Go, is an "internal working plan" to get started. The U.
Small Business Administration SBA has a wealth of free planning, financing, and consulting tools and resources, both online and through available consultants. The SBA offers some great recommendations on creating a business plan, including what type of plan you should choose depending on your business and your needs. Additional reporting by Katherine Arline and Marci Martin. Some source interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article. Sean Peek is a writer, small business owner and SEO specialist.
He began his career in digital marketing as a freelance writer in and has over five years of experience in the B2B space. You can learn more at lightningmediapartners. Product and service reviews are conducted independently by our editorial team, but we sometimes make money when you click on links. Learn more. Start Your Business Business Plans. Free Business Plan Templates for Startups. What Is a Vision Statement?
Download, edit, and send this professionally-designed Business Plans template for PDF & Word in minutes. Save time and money without sacrificing quality. A single page business plan is just as it sounds: a summary of business objectives displayed on a single page.
This One Page Business Plan can serve as a bare bones business plan, or act as the executive summary for a more detailed plan. All content is for informational purposes, and Savetz Publishing makes no claim as to accuracy, legality or suitability. The site owner shall not be held liable for any errors, omissions or for damages of any kind.
Anyone can have a good idea.
HubSpot integrations with apps, tools, and software you use every day. Find a HubSpot-certified marketing agency or sales consultant who can help you grow. This one-page business plan template will help you outline the most important details about your new company or product.
Simple Business Plan Templates for Entrepreneurs
Already have an account? Log in. Sign up. If you need more help, please contact our support team. Collect your online responses with JotForm and turn them into professional, elegant PDFs automatically. A single page business plan is just as it sounds: a summary of business objectives displayed on a single page.
How to Write a One-Page Business Plan: 6 Simple Steps for Success
Having a business plan is a must , whether your goal is to start a one-person freelancing business or a multi-million dollar enterprise. A quick and easy one-page business plan templates can get you started. Lenders and investors will require you to provide more in-depth information in the plan such as:. Keep in mind that a business plan is a living document and you can always start with a one-page plan and enlarge it with additional detail as required. You may be able to articulate the business overview, vision , objectives, and concise action items in a single page, but you might want more detail in the financial and marketing sections. For a one-page plan, the answers to questions should be one or two sentences. This section should articulate your hopes and dreams for the business. You can write a vision statement.
Writing a one page business plan instead of a hundred-page, in-depth business plan no one will ever read has become a popular and efficient way to get your small business moving in the right direction. This article is meant to be an all-inclusive resource for anyone wanting to write their own one page business plan and use it to actually start a business.
Understanding the fundamentals of your business model is the first step to create a winning business plan. That's why we recommend that you start with a simple business plan that fits on a single page. LivePlan will help you clearly explain who your customers are, what your marketing and sales activities will be, and what your product or service offerings will be. It's the quickest way to get started.
One Page Business Plan for PDF & Word
Writing a traditional business plan can seem like a daunting task, and lots of entrepreneurs avoid it for this reason. An easy way to start is with just one page. The one page business plan is a simplified version of traditional operational plans that focuses on the core aspects of your business. While it may be a shorter business plan, it still follows the structure of a standard business plan template and serves as a beefed-up pitch document. The only real possible difference is that a single-page plan must absolutely fit on one page in a font 11 or 12 pt type that most people can still read. A Lean Plan can be slightly longer but still uses summaries and bullet points, while a traditional executive summary can extend to two or three pages—and it will usually use full sentences rather than bullets. However, by starting with a one page plan, you give yourself a minimal document to build from, making it much easier to elaborate or expand sections into a longer form business plan. These same reasons extend to the one page model, but it includes a handful of additional benefits to keep in mind. You can quickly send it as an email attachment, throw it into a slide deck and even have it printed off as an easy read for interested parties. Here are the eight necessary sections to include when developing your one page business plan. Try and keep each section limited to sentences or bullet points to assure you stay within one page. Another best practice when developing the one-pager is to focus on the strengths of your business.
How to write a One Page Business Plan: templates, ideas, and a step-by-step guide
You just need to plan the right way and I just so happen to have the perfect one page business plan to get the job done for you. In the old days, business plans were mostly good for two things: getting money or running terrible corporate exercises. On the money side of things, you had to have a detailed plan that bankers and investors could use to understand everything you wanted to do with the business. On the corporate side of things, well, never mind. Corporations do lots of boring and useless things. The way these money-hungry business plans were drawn up was pretty simple.
