The third eBook in the Foundations category. It rejects the 40-page document most owners think they're supposed to write and replaces it with a one-page plan that's actually used - month after month, year after year.
Members ebook·5 chapters· 20 minute read
Chapter 1
What a Small Business Plan Should Do
Strip away the corporate templates and define a small business plan by its job - making this year's decisions easier and clearer.
A small business plan has one job. It makes the next 12 months of decisions easier and clearer. That's it. Anything in the document that doesn't help with that job is decoration. Anything that does is worth its space, no matter how short or unpolished it looks.
That definition rules out a lot of what owners think they're meant to produce. Five-year financial projections - decoration, because no small business knows its 2031 numbers. Competitive matrices - decoration, because the real competitive picture is felt in customer conversations, not on a grid. Mission statements written by committee - decoration, because they don't change a single decision next month.
This chapter sets the scope for the rest of the eBook. By the end you'll know what your plan is meant to do, what it's not meant to do and which questions to spend your hour on.
The full chapter has the small business plan job description, the four real questions a useful plan answers, and the six things to leave out.
The four real questions
A useful small business plan answers four questions, briefly and honestly.
One: who is this business for, and what is it selling them? Two: how is this business going to be told about and chosen? Three: what does the year need to look like - in pounds, customers and time - for it to be a good year? Four: what are the two or three biggest risks, and what's the plan if they happen?
Four questions. Most owners can draft serious answers to all four in a single sitting. The plan that comes out of those answers is more useful than any 40-page document.
What to leave out
Six things you don't need
A five-year projection. Twelve months is plenty.
A SWOT grid. Helpful as a thinking exercise, not as a page.
A long competitive matrix. One sentence about your real alternatives is enough.
An organisational chart. If it fits in your head, it doesn't need a chart.
A formal mission statement. Your one-sentence customer answer is the mission.
Anything you wrote because the template asked for it.
What 'good' looks like
A good small business plan can be read by you, your partner or your bookkeeper in five minutes. It's open most weeks. It gets revised every quarter. The decisions in it can be tested against reality - the customer was right or wrong, the price held or didn't, the channel worked or didn't, the cost forecast was about right or wildly off. The plan isn't a sealed document. It's a living one.
When the longer plan is the right tool
Three situations call for a longer document. First, an investor pitch - though even there, the deck is the artefact, not the plan. Second, a grant application - where the funder requires a specific format. Third, a major change like opening a second location, where a fuller document forces useful homework. In all three cases, the long document sits on top of the one-page plan, not instead of it. The one-page plan is still the working tool.
What to do this week
Take an honest hour. Try writing one-paragraph answers to the four questions above. Don't worry about format yet - the next chapter handles that. The point of this hour is to find the questions you can't answer quickly. Those questions are where your plan will earn its keep.
The recurring principle this chapter sits on is start with the customer. Every later answer in the plan depends on the customer answer being specific. The next chapter, The One-Page Business Plan, gives you the format to write those four answers into, on a single sheet you'll actually use.
