One Page Business Plan Template

Writing business plans takes time, lots of efforts and mental energy. So should you really do this big job every time you have a new business idea shining above you? Earlier I wrote about how to evaluate new business ideas and the first thing to do is to measure risk, time, efforts and profitability. Doing these very rough assumptions is the best with one page business plan template. So let’s discover what it should contain.

1. Business mission

Think about why you are launching this project, what is the mine reason for it to exist, how will you change the world around you with your new business venture. Yes, changing world is that simple – you do not have to launch the next Google to do that, even a tiny bakery on the corner can make a difference. So be bold and verbalize the business mission which will motivate you and your team as you go for it. And limit yourself only with words count – your business mission should be compressed into one (maximum two!) sentences.

2. Business vision

Describe what you are building, how will your business look like, what scale you are aiming for. Is that a nice and cozy bakery with bread always fresh or is that a national-wide bakery franchise network that you have in mind. Again, one sentence is enough at this stage.

3. Business objectives

These are the milestones on your road towards achieving your business vision. Even kids at school know that objectives should be SMART. So list 3 or 5 really smart goals in this section and double check if they are in line with your business mission and vision. Remember that they should all complement one another.

4. Business strategies

If objectives explain “what”, strategies outline “how”. Usually business ideas arrive accompanied with strategies. For example, “Let’s sell snowboards (“what”) to students on the campus (“how #1”). We’ll make some really cool design with my sketches (“how #2”) and will do the trade-in for snowboards to attract first buyers (“how #3”).

5. Resources and Expenses

Outline what things, premises, people you need to launch your business. Then do a quick research as for how much these basic resources cost (Internet is irreplaceable at this stage!) Put a cost next to each resource, sum them all up and add another 20% to the total to cover “things you might have overlooked at this stage”. This will give you the idea of how much you’ll need to invest into the project.

6. Sales and Revenues

This is indeed a tricky part as projecting future is not what most humans are good at. But you just have to do that to understand how much cash is your business likely to generate and when will your actual sales start. So draw your sales projections in items and USD for the first year (breaking down into quarters) starting from the day when you invested the first dime. Then subtract 20% from every subtotal (this is how you minimize the risk of being overoptimistic about your sales).

And you are done. If your final numbers are positive, the vision is appealing and you still want to make things happen, then you should unlock the next level and do more detailed investigation (in other words write your business plan). If not, and you have a negative outcome at this stage, make your choice and either correct your strategies or put this specific business idea aside. All the best luck!

I am the founder of Invest Engine – the web platform that offers free business plan software and opportunity to post these plans online to find investors.