Episode 9: Building a Business Plan
This Is How You Tackle Your Business Plan
Building a business plan can seem daunting, but it’s essential for your business strategy and long-term success. A well-structured plan helps clarify your vision, measure profit potential, and align your team toward common goals.
Before diving in, let’s review some basic business planning concepts and key considerations to keep in mind.
The Basics of Planning Profit Potential
The Profit Potential Formula
Profit Potential = Strategic Thinking + Progressive Ideas + Innovative Practices – Investment
Key Planning Components
Strategic Thinking: Timing of decisions, troubleshooting, critical analysis, gap analysis
Progressive Ideas: Creative brainstorming, discovery discussions, demand forecasting
Innovative Practices: Navigating complexity, constructive counsel, maintaining positive energy
Investment: Promotional practices, operational options, brand balance, people priorities
Your business plan addresses the who’s, how’s, what’s, and why’s of your venture—whether it’s for funding, presenting your vision, or profiling your business.
Get Clear on You
Start with a clear description of your potential business, including its mission, vision, and purpose statement.
Keep in mind:
Who are your target clients?
What are your capacity limits?
Where do you find fulfillment?
Is there a realistic demand for your ideas and services?
Your values should be woven into your mission and vision. Two critical strategic reflections are WHO your clients are and WHY they would choose you.
Planning Signals Self-Reflection
A business plan should be a living document, adaptable, evolving, and growing with your business.
Start by asking yourself:
Who are my clients?
How do I build client loyalty?
What is my brand identity?
When are my services needed?
Where are service gaps I can leverage?
Can I be complementary instead of competitive?
Do I have a niche service targeting specific demographics?
What will make my offerings stand out?
Is there seasonality in my business, and how should I plan for it?
The answers help you develop ideas, measure financial potential, and create a roadmap for your business.
Now It’s Time for the Numbers
Your financial forecast is critical for demonstrating profit potential and spotting challenges or opportunities. Use tools like a Profit Calculator and a Budget and Cashflow Calculator to project cash flows for 1–5 years.
Numbers communicate your business’s profit potential and support informed decision-making. Remember: what gets measured allows for better decisions.
Now Comes Your Part: Start Writing Your Business Plan
A business plan can feel overwhelming, but breaking it into steps makes it manageable. Focus on the 7 key components:
Business Description: Outline your mission, purpose, and values
Financial Plan: Include flexible forecasting and projections
People Operations Plan: Staffing, team management, hiring needs
Strategic Operations Plan: Agile and forward-thinking processes
Marketing Plan: How you connect with customers and communicate value
Action Plan: Measurable results and milestones
Executive Summary: Concise, focused overview of your plan
Take it one step at a time. Use your preferred work rhythm, whether 30-minute bursts or 1–2 hour sessions, and build your plan gradually.
FREE Resources to Help You Build Your Business Plan:
Episode Transcript
00:00-04:05
Erika: When I was in university, one of my final projects for my degree requirement was to prepare and present a business plan on a real or made-up business. Luckily for me, my Dean was able to place me with a local tech startup that allowed me to use their company for the business plan. I diligently went through every part of the business and made a comprehensive plan.
This was a three to four-month-long project that I had in my last quarter of my degree. Then, when I completed it, I showed up at their office, handed it to the CEO, and the CEO said, Thank you, and I proceeded to watch, almost in slow motion, as he opened the closet door and tossed it on the top shelf. Ouch.
But I learned really quickly that businesses rarely stay in one spot long enough for their business plan to be printed, physical, and in a document. Also, many people consider it to be a funding requirement, a way to prove to an investor or bank that you've thought through your business enough and how it will make money, and therefore how you should get a loan.
A business plan is more than that if you let it be. For me, a business plan contains everything it typically needs to the whos, the whats, why's and the hows. Historically, those business plans would be outdated, especially for new businesses, because our operations would shift and change so fast. We would think that we figured out our niche, and then three months later, we've actually identified a different niche. They changed really fast.
We would learn new things about our customers. So marketing had to change. Finance goals weren't hit because we didn't find our customers, so then we had to adjust our finance goals. But I’m seven and a half years into running my own business, and things still don't stay the same for me, but every year I sit down and create a new business plan to help us stay focused in a new fiscal year, or after 12 months when a new year starts.
For example, marketing shifts and changes based on algorithms. The team shifts and changes based on business needs or team needs. Finances shift and change based on money in, money out, growth periods, slow periods, seasonality, you name it. Strategy and operations shift and change based on marketing conditions, software available, maybe. All of these things shift and change.
So my solution to this: I always start with finances because everything in business comes back to finance for me. I use a profit calculator to figure out exactly how much I need to sell in order to hit my finance goals. From there, I also update my cashflow forecast or budget to reflect the reality of my business, real numbers, real forecasting.
I compare those to the profit calculator and make adjustments accordingly to ensure that I'm on the right track. Now, my finances, I don't just do once a year. I do it quarterly, typically go in and update my actuals against my budget. Of course, I'm doing my finances on a more regular basis than that.
Once I'm done with my finances, I then work out my marketing plan, a posting schedule, topics, education pieces. I learned years ago that last-minute marketing just does not work for me, and I need to have some type of plan in place, whether that's a month out, three months out, or 12 months out. Whatever works for you.
Lastly, I then review our operations and strategy plan. There's a little bit more in my head than in a document, but making sure that we're staying as efficient as possible and always learning and growing. As part of this operations and strategy plan, I also look at where my team is at and how I can help them learn and grow or grow into a new position within the company.
04:06-6:46
Erika: Even spontaneity, I was just talking with a client a few weeks ago about how spontaneity is just intentional planning, but going with the flow a little bit more. If you're asking yourself, What's the point of a business plan? There's a simple answer. It helps you to start developing your ideas and your business, and helps you flush out ideas that may not be your strength.
I often hear that numbers aren't a business owner's strength, for example. For me, marketing wasn't necessarily a strength that I had when I started my business, but as I continue to iterate and reiterate and build up my business plan and marketing plan, year after year, month after month, I was able to start getting good at them and recognizing where my weaknesses or my gaps were.
I always like to joke with my clients that I don't enjoy marketing and I'm not very good at it, which is why preparing a marketing plan is important to me. Similarly, you might be very good at marketing, but you need overall help with strategy, so the strategic plan of your business will be important for you.
Keep in mind that a business plan should be a living document and updated regularly to keep up with changes and improvements in your business. I know that I mentioned earlier how my business plan, that I wrote several years ago, was just tossed in the closet, but now my business plan is updated on a quarterly basis, as well as updates given to my team about how we're doing with our goals. How are we doing financially? So make sure that it's a living document that works for you.
With this in mind, there are seven parts to a business plan that you'll need.
First of all, you have the business description, your overall mission, values, or purpose. You'll want to write about your business, what you do, why you do it, and who you serve.
If you're a new business, it can be hard to figure out your ideal customer. So I encourage you to take a step further and ask yourself why they want to buy from you. For example, if you own a health and wellness business, you might think, well, we serve everybody. Well, it's not quite that easy. You are serving people who are perhaps in pain or have chronic illness.
Perhaps your marketing is gonna be more geared towards people in their forties and fifties that are suffering from certain ailments. So yes, while you might be a health and wellness spot, you still want your marketing to target that ideal customer and the problems that you solve most.
06:47-09:42
Erika: The next thing that you need is a marketing plan.
Include where your ideal customer lives, online and offline. How will you reach them? Will you pay for advertising? The plan should be short-term, but also long-term, so you'll have part A, part B. How often will you post on social media? Will you have a Google Business account? All of this should go into the plan with overall messaging and tone of voice.
In the marketing plan, you'll also want to ensure that you talk about your product mix or the different services and products that you offer to your customers or clients to buy from you. As we tell our future customers about our products, we want to talk to them in the niche that we're in. Again, going back to selling services to people that are in their forties and fifties, from suffering from certain ailments.
You'll know what that is. You'll know what your area of expertise is in. For me, I really love helping business owners that are in their twenties, thirties and forties, that have been in business anywhere from three months to years, and are typically in the health and wellness space, business coaching space, or just a creative space overall. And those are my three niches that I work towards.
The next part of your business plan is a strategic operating plan. This is the stuff I love. How are you gonna run your business? What systems will you use and have in place? Will you work remotely or have an office? What are the hours going to be of your business?
For example, are you gonna meet with your clients eight times a day, one time a day, or only on certain days of the week? Having that in your strategic operating plan will help you plan how your business is going to operate from a high-level, bird-level view kind of thing.
Next, I know that I mentioned the team members in the strategic operating plan, but now we're gonna break it down in a full HR or in people ops plan. Are you gonna hire right away, or are you gonna wait it out a little bit? Are you going to outsource at all? Meaning, are you gonna have subcontractors? Are they going to be based in your country? Are they gonna be based in a different country, maybe? Does it matter to you?
These items all need to be broken out.
Who will help you legally? What about financially? Will you have an accountant or a bookkeeper? Probably both. Who are you going to hire to help you through the busy times? All businesses have some type of seasonality, mine included. So what about yours? Is it more busy towards the end of a benefits year, typically a calendar year, or is it a little lighter in the summertime or right after the holiday season?
Having all of that built out will ensure that, one, you don't get burnt out, but also your team doesn't get burnt out.
09:43-12:16
Erika: From there, you go into the financial plan. It's, of course, no secret that spreadsheets are my second true love. Everything I do in life is around spreadsheets. I even plan my wedding in a spreadsheet.
Finances and spreadsheets are best friends, and that's how I plan, and that's also how business owners have to plan. I have a one-year financial plan, a three-year and a five-year. The five-year is a bit of a daydream, of course, but sometimes doing that helps me stay a little sane and helps me find a little bit of drive when I'm maybe feeling a little sluggish in my business.
Demonstrating that you know and understand the financial side of your business is not just for the bank; it's also for you to know if you're gonna be profitable, and it will help you sleep at night. If you know exactly how many appointments you need to have in your business in order to be profitable, I bet that you would probably sleep a little bit better at night knowing exactly what you need to do.
For more insight on money mindset and how I handle those kinds of things, check back to episode eight and hear all about those mindset shifts that I've done in my business as well.
Next, the action plan. So this is where you're gonna break out exactly how you're gonna do all of this, typically for the next year.
Because again, businesses change really fast. For example, if we take a health and wellness business. In month one, you're going to hire an accountant or bookkeeper to help set all your financial systems. Your first sale will be on day 10 because of your marketing plan and referral or network. In month two, you're going to be going out to networking events and meeting more potential clients, or wherever your clients are hanging out, maybe they're more likely to be online, so then you start showing up on Instagram or TikTok or LinkedIn, wherever they're living online.
In month six or onwards, you're going to hire a subcontractor or an employee to assist in whatever area that you feel there could be a gap at at that point in time. Maybe it's hiring someone to take on more appointments for you. Maybe it's hiring a subcontractor to help with your marketing needs.
Ultimately, once you work through the first five parts of a business plan, you're going to know where the gap is going to be. You get the idea, you'll wanna plan for the first 12 months of your business, and that will help you set SMART goals and how you achieve them. All goals should have some broken down into months or quarters in order to make sure you're staying on track.
12:17-14:42
Erika: Finally, the last part of a business plan is the executive summary. This is typically if you're seeking funding or talking to any investors, but this is where you'll summarize points one to six or plans one to six on a single page. You pick the highlights of each section and summarize them here.
Now, I did speak earlier about how I felt business plans might get a little stale, and while I do feel like that's true, it also helps get your ideas out and onto a document of some kind.
Keep in mind that that document is a living document. It should be updated regularly to reflect what's going on in your business. You don't have to start over every single time. You just have to update it. Writing things out, just like talking it out helps formulate the plan, the goals. Planning out realistic finances helps you know that you're on the right track.
Formulating your marketing plan, make sure that you can attract the right people to your business and planning out your operations well, that just makes sure that you're not going to get burnt out. I know that writing a whole business plan can be a little daunting, but ChatGPT can't do it for you. You can't ask Google to do it for you. So take some time on a Saturday morning with a cup of coffee and start writing it out.
I've created some of the pieces of the puzzle for you, so head over to the show notes and find the links to your profit calculator, your cashflow calculator, as well as a basic marketing plan that you can build off of. [Links to resources pinned at the top]
Hope you enjoyed today's episode. As a reminder, you just need six pieces for a business plan. That's a business description with your mission and your values, and your purpose. You need a marketing plan, you need a strategic operating plan. You need a people ops plan, the financial plan, of course, and finally, the action plan.
Set those smart goals and start running. But also, if you need some help, we can certainly help you with that with a quick clarity session at www.signalember.com.
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