what is organizing business plan

How to Start a Profitable Organizing Business [11 Steps]

Business steps:, 1. perform market analysis..

Before launching an organizing business, it's crucial to understand the market you're entering. A thorough market analysis will help you identify potential customers, understand the competition, and carve out a niche for your services. Here's how to get started:

Are Organizing businesses profitable?

2. draft a organizing business plan..

Creating a business plan is a critical step in launching your organizing business. It will serve as a roadmap to guide you through setting up, managing, and growing your venture effectively. Here's a concise guide to help you draft an essential business plan for your organizing business:

How does a Organizing business make money?

3. develop a organizing brand., how to come up with a name for your organizing business.

When it comes to naming your organizing business, the best way to come up with an original and catchy name is to brainstorm ideas. Think about what values you want to represent and incorporate them into the name. Think about words that evoke the qualities and services you offer, and then use a thesaurus to find alternative versions of those words. Finally, check to make sure the name is available and not taken by another business.

4. Formalize your business registration.

Resources to help get you started:.

Explore crucial resources designed for home organizing entrepreneurs aiming for insights into market trends, operational excellence, and strategic business expansion:

5. Acquire necessary licenses and permits for organizing.

Starting an organizing business requires compliance with various legal regulations to operate smoothly and legally. Here's a rundown of the essential licenses and permits you might need to acquire:

What licenses and permits are needed to run a organizing business?

Licenses and permits required to run an organizing business may vary depending on the location, but in general they may include a business license, a tax ID number and any permits required by local or state regulations. Depending on the services offered, additional specific licenses and permits may be required.

6. Open a business bank account and secure funding as needed.

Securing your financial base is essential when starting your organizing business. A dedicated business bank account will help you manage your finances effectively, while securing funding can provide the necessary capital to grow your venture. Follow these steps to ensure your business is financially prepared:

7. Set pricing for organizing services.

Setting the right price for your organizing services is crucial as it affects your marketability and profitability. It's important to consider your costs, the value you provide, and your target market's willingness to pay. Below are some key points to consider when setting your prices:

What does it cost to start a Organizing business?

8. acquire organizing equipment and supplies., list of software, tools and supplies needed to start a organizing business:, 9. obtain business insurance for organizing, if required., 10. begin marketing your organizing services., 11. expand your organizing business..

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What Is a Business Plan?

Understanding business plans, how to write a business plan, common elements of a business plan, the bottom line, business plan: what it is, what's included, and how to write one.

Adam Hayes, Ph.D., CFA, is a financial writer with 15+ years Wall Street experience as a derivatives trader. Besides his extensive derivative trading expertise, Adam is an expert in economics and behavioral finance. Adam received his master's in economics from The New School for Social Research and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in sociology. He is a CFA charterholder as well as holding FINRA Series 7, 55 & 63 licenses. He currently researches and teaches economic sociology and the social studies of finance at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

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A business plan is a document that outlines a company's goals and the strategies to achieve them. It's valuable for both startups and established companies. For startups, a well-crafted business plan is crucial for attracting potential lenders and investors. Established businesses use business plans to stay on track and aligned with their growth objectives. This article will explain the key components of an effective business plan and guidance on how to write one.

Key Takeaways

• A business plan is a document detailing a company's business activities and strategies for achieving its goals.
• Startup companies use business plans to launch their venture and to attract outside investors.
• For established companies, a business plan helps keep the executive team focused on short- and long-term objectives.
• There's no single required format for a business plan, but certain key elements are essential for most companies.

Investopedia / Ryan Oakley

Any new business should have a business plan in place before beginning operations. Banks and venture capital firms often want to see a business plan before considering making a loan or providing capital to new businesses.

Even if a company doesn't need additional funding, having a business plan helps it stay focused on its goals. Research from the University of Oregon shows that businesses with a plan are significantly more likely to secure funding than those without one. Moreover, companies with a business plan grow 30% faster than those that don't plan. According to a Harvard Business Review article, entrepreneurs who write formal plans are 16% more likely to achieve viability than those who don't.

A business plan should ideally be reviewed and updated periodically to reflect achieved goals or changes in direction. An established business moving in a new direction might even create an entirely new plan.

There are numerous benefits to creating (and sticking to) a well-conceived business plan. It allows for careful consideration of ideas before significant investment, highlights potential obstacles to success, and provides a tool for seeking objective feedback from trusted outsiders. A business plan may also help ensure that a company’s executive team remains aligned on strategic action items and priorities.

While business plans vary widely, even among competitors in the same industry, they often share basic elements detailed below.

A well-crafted business plan is essential for attracting investors and guiding a company's strategic growth. It should address market needs and investor requirements and provide clear financial projections.

While there are any number of templates that you can use to write a business plan, it's best to try to avoid producing a generic-looking one. Let your plan reflect the unique personality of your business.

Many business plans use some combination of the sections below, with varying levels of detail, depending on the company.

The length of a business plan can vary greatly from business to business. Regardless, gathering the basic information into a 15- to 25-page document is best. Any additional crucial elements, such as patent applications, can be referenced in the main document and included as appendices.

Common elements in many business plans include:

• Executive summary : This section introduces the company and includes its mission statement along with relevant information about the company's leadership, employees, operations, and locations.
• Products and services : Describe the products and services the company offers or plans to introduce. Include details on pricing, product lifespan, and unique consumer benefits. Mention production and manufacturing processes, relevant patents , proprietary technology , and research and development (R&D) information.
• Market analysis : Explain the current state of the industry and the competition. Detail where the company fits in, the types of customers it plans to target, and how it plans to capture market share from competitors.
• Marketing strategy : Outline the company's plans to attract and retain customers, including anticipated advertising and marketing campaigns. Describe the distribution channels that will be used to deliver products or services to consumers.
• Financial plans and projections : Established businesses should include financial statements, balance sheets, and other relevant financial information. New businesses should provide financial targets and estimates for the first few years. This section may also include any funding requests.

Investors want to see a clear exit strategy, expected returns, and a timeline for cashing out. It's likely a good idea to provide five-year profitability forecasts and realistic financial estimates.

2 Types of Business Plans

Business plans can vary in format, often categorized into traditional and lean startup plans. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) , the traditional business plan is the more common of the two.

• Traditional business plans : These are detailed and lengthy, requiring more effort to create but offering comprehensive information that can be persuasive to potential investors.
• Lean startup business plans : These are concise, sometimes just one page, and focus on key elements. While they save time, companies should be ready to provide additional details if requested by investors or lenders.

Why Do Business Plans Fail?

A business plan isn't a surefire recipe for success. The plan may have been unrealistic in its assumptions and projections. Markets and the economy might change in ways that couldn't have been foreseen. A competitor might introduce a revolutionary new product or service. All this calls for building flexibility into your plan, so you can pivot to a new course if needed.

How Often Should a Business Plan Be Updated?

How frequently a business plan needs to be revised will depend on its nature. Updating your business plan is crucial due to changes in external factors (market trends, competition, and regulations) and internal developments (like employee growth and new products). While a well-established business might want to review its plan once a year and make changes if necessary, a new or fast-growing business in a fiercely competitive market might want to revise it more often, such as quarterly.

What Does a Lean Startup Business Plan Include?

The lean startup business plan is ideal for quickly explaining a business, especially for new companies that don't have much information yet. Key sections may include a value proposition , major activities and advantages, resources (staff, intellectual property, and capital), partnerships, customer segments, and revenue sources.

A well-crafted business plan is crucial for any company, whether it's a startup looking for investment or an established business wanting to stay on course. It outlines goals and strategies, boosting a company's chances of securing funding and achieving growth.

As your business and the market change, update your business plan regularly. This keeps it relevant and aligned with your current goals and conditions. Think of your business plan as a living document that evolves with your company, not something carved in stone.

University of Oregon Department of Economics. " Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Business Planning Using Palo Alto's Business Plan Pro ." Eason Ding & Tim Hursey.

Bplans. " Do You Need a Business Plan? Scientific Research Says Yes ."

Harvard Business Review. " Research: Writing a Business Plan Makes Your Startup More Likely to Succeed ."

Harvard Business Review. " How to Write a Winning Business Plan ."

U.S. Small Business Administration. " Write Your Business Plan ."

SCORE. " When and Why Should You Review Your Business Plan? "

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What is a Business Plan? Definition, Tips, and Templates

Published: June 28, 2024

Years ago, I had an idea to launch a line of region-specific board games. I knew there was a market for games that celebrated local culture and heritage. I was so excited about the concept and couldn't wait to get started.

But my idea never took off. Why? Because I didn‘t have a plan. I lacked direction, missed opportunities, and ultimately, the venture never got off the ground.

And that’s exactly why a business plan is important. It cements your vision, gives you clarity, and outlines your next step.

In this post, I‘ll explain what a business plan is, the reasons why you’d need one, identify different types of business plans, and what you should include in yours.

Table of Contents

What is a business plan?

What is a business plan used for.

• Business Plan Template [Download Now]

Purposes of a Business Plan

What does a business plan need to include, types of business plans.

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A business plan is a comprehensive document that outlines a company's goals, strategies, and financial projections. It provides a detailed description of the business, including its products or services, target market, competitive landscape, and marketing and sales strategies. The plan also includes a financial section that forecasts revenue, expenses, and cash flow, as well as a funding request if the business is seeking investment.

The business plan is an undeniably critical component to getting any company off the ground. It's key to securing financing, documenting your business model, outlining your financial projections, and turning that nugget of a business idea into a reality.

The purpose of a business plan is three-fold: It summarizes the organization’s strategy in order to execute it long term, secures financing from investors, and helps forecast future business demands.

Business Plan Template [ Download Now ]

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How to Start a Professional Organizing Business

Today's busy world means people are responsible for doing more than ever before. This multi-tasking environment requires a high-level of organization which few people have naturally. A professional organizing business helps clients develop these critical organizing skills through training and can jumpstart the process by providing a full range of organizing services.

You may also be interested in additional side hustle ideas .

Learn how to start your own Professional Organizing Business and whether it is the right fit for you.

Ready to form your LLC? Check out the Top LLC Formation Services .

Start a professional organizing business by following these 10 steps:

• Plan your Professional Organizing Business
• Form your Professional Organizing Business into a Legal Entity
• Register your Professional Organizing Business for Taxes
• Open a Business Bank Account & Credit Card
• Set up Accounting for your Professional Organizing Business
• Get the Necessary Permits & Licenses for your Professional Organizing Business
• Get Professional Organizing Business Insurance
• Define your Professional Organizing Business Brand
• Create your Professional Organizing Business Website
• Set up your Business Phone System

We have put together this simple guide to starting your professional organizing business. These steps will ensure that your new business is well planned out, registered properly and legally compliant.

Exploring your options? Check out other small business ideas .

STEP 1: Plan your business

A clear plan is essential for success as an entrepreneur. It will help you map out the specifics of your business and discover some unknowns. A few important topics to consider are:

What will you name your business?

• What are the startup and ongoing costs?
• Who is your target market?

How much can you charge customers?

Luckily we have done a lot of this research for you.

Choosing the right name is important and challenging. If you don’t already have a name in mind, visit our How to Name a Business guide or get help brainstorming a name with our Professional Organizing Business Name Generator

If you operate a sole proprietorship , you might want to operate under a business name other than your own name. Visit our DBA guide to learn more.

When registering a business name , we recommend researching your business name by checking:

• Your state's business records
• Federal and state trademark records
• Social media platforms
• Web domain availability .

It's very important to secure your domain name before someone else does.

Want some help naming your professional organizing business?

Business name generator, what are the costs involved in opening a professional organizing business.

The costs for starting a professional organizing business are minimal as most businesses of these type work from home. In addition to the typical costs of registering a business and getting legal, typical startup costs may include:

• Liability insurance, the cost depending on your area and how much insurance you need.
• Website design and hosting. This cost can range from very low to much more expensive. Since your site will be the main contact point for new customers, it is worth spending more. A budget of $1000 dollars should be more than enough to cover a well-designed site with one year of hosting.
• Transportation. Most likely you will use your own vehicle, so you won't need to invest in a new one.
• Computer. Chances are you already have one.
• Education. This is where you will spend the bulk of your startup capital. Professional organizer are not required to have a particular educational background, but certain certificates and education can make you stand out. One of the most sought-after programs is from the National Association of Professional Organizers whose NAPO University offers courses ranging from free to hundreds of dollars.
• Membership fees in a national organization. Becoming a member of industry organization can help you attract clients and help manage your business. There are several organizations you can choose to join, including NAPO .

What are the ongoing expenses for a professional organizing business?

The monthly expenses are minimal, and usually just include advertising and transportation costs.

Who is the target market?

The best clients for a professional organizing business are people who lack the skills to get and stay organized, those who don't have the time to stay organized, or individuals who hate to organize on their own. Many clients who employ professional organizers are busy professionals who are used to hiring assistants to take care of everyday tasks and are comfortable with handing over control without micromanaging.

How does a professional organizing business make money?

This business makes money by providing organizing services and training clients how to become better at organizing. Most professional organizers charge clients by the hour or per day. Other professional organizers choose to charge on a per task basis.

According to PayScale.com , the average hourly pay is just under $26 per hour.

How much profit can a professional organizing business make?

The income range for a professional organizer as listed on PayScale.com , is approximately $30,000 to $115,000 a year.

How can you make your business more profitable?

One of the best ways to make your business more profitable is to become a specialist in a particular aspect of the organization industry, such as moving organization. Choose whichever aspect of organizing is the most interesting to you, but it is usually more profitable to specialize in business-related areas.

Want a more guided approach? Access TRUiC's free Small Business Startup Guide - a step-by-step course for turning your business idea into reality. Get started today!

STEP 2: Form a legal entity

The most common business structure types are the sole proprietorship , partnership , limited liability company (LLC) , and corporation .

Establishing a legal business entity such as an LLC or corporation protects you from being held personally liable if your professional organizing business is sued.

Form Your LLC

Read our Guide to Form Your Own LLC

Have a Professional Service Form your LLC for You

Two such reliable services:

You can form an LLC yourself and pay only the minimal state LLC costs or hire one of the Best LLC Services for a small, additional fee.

Recommended: You will need to elect a registered agent for your LLC. LLC formation packages usually include a free year of registered agent services . You can choose to hire a registered agent or act as your own.

STEP 3: Register for taxes

You will need to register for a variety of state and federal taxes before you can open for business.

In order to register for taxes you will need to apply for an EIN. It's really easy and free!

You can acquire your EIN through the IRS website . If you would like to learn more about EINs, read our article, What is an EIN?

There are specific state taxes that might apply to your business. Learn more about state sales tax and franchise taxes in our state sales tax guides.

STEP 4: Open a business bank account & credit card

Using dedicated business banking and credit accounts is essential for personal asset protection.

When your personal and business accounts are mixed, your personal assets (your home, car, and other valuables) are at risk in the event your business is sued. In business law, this is referred to as piercing your corporate veil .

Open a business bank account

Besides being a requirement when applying for business loans, opening a business bank account:

• Separates your personal assets from your company's assets, which is necessary for personal asset protection.
• Makes accounting and tax filing easier.

Recommended: Read our Best Banks for Small Business review to find the best national bank or credit union.

Get a business credit card

Getting a business credit card helps you:

• Separate personal and business expenses by putting your business' expenses all in one place.
• Build your company's credit history , which can be useful to raise money later on.

Recommended: Apply for an easy approval business credit card from BILL and build your business credit quickly.

STEP 5: Set up business accounting

Recording your various expenses and sources of income is critical to understanding the financial performance of your business. Keeping accurate and detailed accounts also greatly simplifies your annual tax filing.

Make LLC accounting easy with our LLC Expenses Cheat Sheet.

STEP 6: Obtain necessary permits and licenses

Failure to acquire necessary permits and licenses can result in hefty fines, or even cause your business to be shut down.

State & Local Business Licensing Requirements

Certain state permits and licenses may be needed to operate a professional organizing business. Learn more about licensing requirements in your state by visiting SBA’s reference to state licenses and permits .

Most businesses are required to collect sales tax on the goods or services they provide. To learn more about how sales tax will affect your business, read our article, Sales Tax for Small Businesses .

Services Contract

Having a concise service contract will only help you. This will minimize your legal exposure to unknown factors, as well as align expectations between you and your client. Your contract should outline exactly what types of organization you will offer your clients, so there is no confusion.  Here is an example service agreement.

Recommended: Rocket Lawyer makes it easy to create a professional service agreement for your professional organizing business when you sign up for their premium membership. For $39.95 per month, members receive access to hundreds of legal agreements and on call attorneys to get complimentary legal advice.

STEP 7: Get business insurance

Just as with licenses and permits, your business needs insurance in order to operate safely and lawfully. Business Insurance protects your company’s financial wellbeing in the event of a covered loss.

There are several types of insurance policies created for different types of businesses with different risks. If you’re unsure of the types of risks that your business may face, begin with General Liability Insurance . This is the most common coverage that small businesses need, so it’s a great place to start for your business.

Another notable insurance policy that many businesses need is Workers’ Compensation Insurance . If your business will have employees, it’s a good chance that your state will require you to carry Workers' Compensation Coverage.

FInd out what types of insurance your Professional Organizing Business needs and how much it will cost you by reading our guide Business Insurance for Professional Organizing Business.

STEP 8: Define your brand

Your brand is what your company stands for, as well as how your business is perceived by the public. A strong brand will help your business stand out from competitors.

If you aren't feeling confident about designing your small business logo, then check out our Design Guides for Beginners , we'll give you helpful tips and advice for creating the best unique logo for your business.

Recommended : Get a logo using Truic's free logo Generator no email or sign up required, or use a Premium Logo Maker .

If you already have a logo, you can also add it to a QR code with our Free QR Code Generator . Choose from 13 QR code types to create a code for your business cards and publications, or to help spread awareness for your new website.

How to promote & market a professional organizing business

Most clients look for services online, therefore, a website is essential for promoting your business. In addition to a company website, you should have a visible and active social media account. Opening an account on third-party sites like Angie's List or HomeAdvisor can expose your business to more potential clients. Depending on the type of client you are targeting, you may want to advertise in the local newspaper or an industry-specific publication.

How to keep customers coming back

The main barrier to getting more customers is that most people don't know that the professional organizing industry exists. Use social media and volunteer to give public talks on different organizing topics as promotions for your business.

STEP 9: Create your business website

After defining your brand and creating your logo the next step is to create a website for your business .

While creating a website is an essential step, some may fear that it’s out of their reach because they don’t have any website-building experience. While this may have been a reasonable fear back in 2015, web technology has seen huge advancements in the past few years that makes the lives of small business owners much simpler.

Here are the main reasons why you shouldn’t delay building your website:

• All legitimate businesses have websites - full stop. The size or industry of your business does not matter when it comes to getting your business online.
• Social media accounts like Facebook pages or LinkedIn business profiles are not a replacement for a business website that you own.
• Website builder tools like the GoDaddy Website Builder have made creating a basic website extremely simple. You don’t need to hire a web developer or designer to create a website that you can be proud of.

Recommended : Get started today using our recommended website builder or check out our review of the Best Website Builders .

Other popular website builders are: WordPress , WIX , Weebly , Squarespace , and Shopify .

STEP 10: Set up your business phone system

Getting a phone set up for your business is one of the best ways to help keep your personal life and business life separate and private. That’s not the only benefit; it also helps you make your business more automated, gives your business legitimacy, and makes it easier for potential customers to find and contact you.

There are many services available to entrepreneurs who want to set up a business phone system. We’ve reviewed the top companies and rated them based on price, features, and ease of use. Check out our review of the Best Business Phone Systems 2023 to find the best phone service for your small business.

Recommended Business Phone Service: Phone.com

Phone.com is our top choice for small business phone numbers because of all the features it offers for small businesses and it's fair pricing.

Is this Business Right For You?

Starting a professional organizing business is perfect for anyone who is good at creating systems to keep things organized. Successful owners of this type of business love to work directly with a variety of different types of people, and have the ability help others learn new skills. A professional organizing business offers flexible hours, but owners will need to be able to stick to project deadlines without any oversight.

Want to know if you are cut out to be an entrepreneur?

Take our Entrepreneurship Quiz to find out!

Entrepreneurship Quiz

What happens during a typical day at a professional organizing business?

A large portion of the day is spent time working with clients in their home or office. If a professional organizer is hired to organize a business, the work usually revolves around organizing and creating storage solutions for business and financial documents. A professional organizer may also help business clients to find better ways to manage their time and put easy-to-follow systems in place. Meeting with a client at their home can mean organizing just about anything in the home from helping to arrange a functional clothing system to sorting through piles of boxes. When professional organizers are not visiting clients, they are usually promoting their businesses online or communicating with potential clients by email or on the phone.

What are some skills and experiences that will help you build a successful professional organizing business?

Of course, to succeed in the professional organizing business, you need to know how to organize, but that is not the only skill you need. A solid foundation in marketing, especially online marketing is important. There are a variety of companies that offer help with developing the type of skills you need to run a professional organizing business. Try contacting one of the several organizations which support businesses in this organization like the National Association of Professional Organizers to learn more.

What is the growth potential for a professional organizing business?

The growth potential for this type of business is very good due to the increasing demands on people from work. The job of a professional organizer is still quite new, and the market is not yet saturated. There are plenty of potential clients who are not yet aware of this type of service.

Not sure if a professional organizing business is right for you? Try our free Business Idea Generator and find your perfect idea.

TRUiC's YouTube Channel

For fun informative videos about starting a business visit the TRUiC YouTube Channel or subscribe to view later.

Take the Next Step

Find a business mentor.

One of the greatest resources an entrepreneur can have is quality mentorship. As you start planning your business, connect with a free business resource near you to get the help you need.

Having a support network in place to turn to during tough times is a major factor of success for new business owners.

Learn from other business owners

Want to learn more about starting a business from entrepreneurs themselves? Visit Startup Savant’s startup founder series to gain entrepreneurial insights, lessons, and advice from founders themselves.

Resources to Help Women in Business

There are many resources out there specifically for women entrepreneurs. We’ve gathered necessary and useful information to help you succeed both professionally and personally:

If you’re a woman looking for some guidance in entrepreneurship, check out this great new series Women in Business created by the women of our partner Startup Savant.

What are some insider tips for jump starting a professional organizing business?

Those new to the professional organizing business industry tend to have better luck concentrating on residential clients in the beginning. Unless you have an extensive business background, or are confident in your ability you may want to look for work organizing homes. Try to market your business to families living in your area at first. Volunteering to speak about organizing and productivity at your local library is a great way to drum up business.  

How and when to build a team

Many professional organizing businesses are owner operated. It may be feasible to run a business managing a team of professional organizers, but you would need to build up an extensive list of clients beforehand to make it profitable.

Useful Links

Industry opportunities.

• Clutterbusters - Franchise Opportunity
• The Tailored Closet - Franchise Opportunity

Real World Examples

• Ann Arbor, Michigan - A2 Home Organizers
• New York, New York - Andrew Mellen

Further Reading

• National Association of Professional Organizers

Additional Sources

• Metropolitan Organizing - 6 Steps for Starting a Professional Organizing Business
• Your Organizing Business - How to Start a Professional Organizing Business

Have a Question? Leave a Comment!

How To Write A Business Plan (2024 Guide)

Updated: Apr 17, 2024, 11:59am

Table of Contents

Brainstorm an executive summary, create a company description, brainstorm your business goals, describe your services or products, conduct market research, create financial plans, bottom line, frequently asked questions.

Every business starts with a vision, which is distilled and communicated through a business plan. In addition to your high-level hopes and dreams, a strong business plan outlines short-term and long-term goals, budget and whatever else you might need to get started. In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to write a business plan that you can stick to and help guide your operations as you get started.

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Drafting the Summary

An executive summary is an extremely important first step in your business. You have to be able to put the basic facts of your business in an elevator pitch-style sentence to grab investors’ attention and keep their interest. This should communicate your business’s name, what the products or services you’re selling are and what marketplace you’re entering.

Ask for Help

When drafting the executive summary, you should have a few different options. Enlist a few thought partners to review your executive summary possibilities to determine which one is best.

After you have the executive summary in place, you can work on the company description, which contains more specific information. In the description, you’ll need to include your business’s registered name , your business address and any key employees involved in the business. 

The business description should also include the structure of your business, such as sole proprietorship , limited liability company (LLC) , partnership or corporation. This is the time to specify how much of an ownership stake everyone has in the company. Finally, include a section that outlines the history of the company and how it has evolved over time.

Wherever you are on the business journey, you return to your goals and assess where you are in meeting your in-progress targets and setting new goals to work toward.

Numbers-based Goals

Goals can cover a variety of sections of your business. Financial and profit goals are a given for when you’re establishing your business, but there are other goals to take into account as well with regard to brand awareness and growth. For example, you might want to hit a certain number of followers across social channels or raise your engagement rates.

Another goal could be to attract new investors or find grants if you’re a nonprofit business. If you’re looking to grow, you’ll want to set revenue targets to make that happen as well.

Intangible Goals

Goals unrelated to traceable numbers are important as well. These can include seeing your business’s advertisement reach the general public or receiving a terrific client review. These goals are important for the direction you take your business and the direction you want it to go in the future.

The business plan should have a section that explains the services or products that you’re offering. This is the part where you can also describe how they fit in the current market or are providing something necessary or entirely new. If you have any patents or trademarks, this is where you can include those too.

If you have any visual aids, they should be included here as well. This would also be a good place to include pricing strategy and explain your materials.

This is the part of the business plan where you can explain your expertise and different approach in greater depth. Show how what you’re offering is vital to the market and fills an important gap.

You can also situate your business in your industry and compare it to other ones and how you have a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Other than financial goals, you want to have a budget and set your planned weekly, monthly and annual spending. There are several different costs to consider, such as operational costs.

Business Operations Costs

Rent for your business is the first big cost to factor into your budget. If your business is remote, the cost that replaces rent will be the software that maintains your virtual operations.

Marketing and sales costs should be next on your list. Devoting money to making sure people know about your business is as important as making sure it functions.

Other Costs

Although you can’t anticipate disasters, there are likely to be unanticipated costs that come up at some point in your business’s existence. It’s important to factor these possible costs into your financial plans so you’re not caught totally unaware.

Business plans are important for businesses of all sizes so that you can define where your business is and where you want it to go. Growing your business requires a vision, and giving yourself a roadmap in the form of a business plan will set you up for success.

How do I write a simple business plan?

When you’re working on a business plan, make sure you have as much information as possible so that you can simplify it to the most relevant information. A simple business plan still needs all of the parts included in this article, but you can be very clear and direct.

What are some common mistakes in a business plan?

The most common mistakes in a business plan are common writing issues like grammar errors or misspellings. It’s important to be clear in your sentence structure and proofread your business plan before sending it to any investors or partners.

What basic items should be included in a business plan?

When writing out a business plan, you want to make sure that you cover everything related to your concept for the business,  an analysis of the industry―including potential customers and an overview of the market for your goods or services―how you plan to execute your vision for the business, how you plan to grow the business if it becomes successful and all financial data around the business, including current cash on hand, potential investors and budget plans for the next few years.

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How to Write a Business Plan: Step-by-Step Guide + Examples

Noah Parsons

24 min. read

Updated May 7, 2024

Writing a business plan doesn’t have to be complicated. 

In this step-by-step guide, you’ll learn how to write a business plan that’s detailed enough to impress bankers and potential investors, while giving you the tools to start, run, and grow a successful business.

• The basics of business planning

If you’re reading this guide, then you already know why you need a business plan . 

You understand that planning helps you: 

• Raise money
• Grow strategically
• Keep your business on the right track 

As you start to write your plan, it’s useful to zoom out and remember what a business plan is .

At its core, a business plan is an overview of the products and services you sell, and the customers that you sell to. It explains your business strategy: how you’re going to build and grow your business, what your marketing strategy is, and who your competitors are.

Most business plans also include financial forecasts for the future. These set sales goals, budget for expenses, and predict profits and cash flow. 

A good business plan is much more than just a document that you write once and forget about. It’s also a guide that helps you outline and achieve your goals. 

After completing your plan, you can use it as a management tool to track your progress toward your goals. Updating and adjusting your forecasts and budgets as you go is one of the most important steps you can take to run a healthier, smarter business. 

We’ll dive into how to use your plan later in this article.

There are many different types of plans , but we’ll go over the most common type here, which includes everything you need for an investor-ready plan. However, if you’re just starting out and are looking for something simpler—I recommend starting with a one-page business plan . It’s faster and easier to create. 

It’s also the perfect place to start if you’re just figuring out your idea, or need a simple strategic plan to use inside your business.

Dig deeper : How to write a one-page business plan

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• What to include in your business plan

Executive summary

The executive summary is an overview of your business and your plans. It comes first in your plan and is ideally just one to two pages. Most people write it last because it’s a summary of the complete business plan.

Ideally, the executive summary can act as a stand-alone document that covers the highlights of your detailed plan. 

In fact, it’s common for investors to ask only for the executive summary when evaluating your business. If they like what they see in the executive summary, they’ll often follow up with a request for a complete plan, a pitch presentation , or more in-depth financial forecasts .

Your executive summary should include:

• A summary of the problem you are solving
• A description of your product or service
• An overview of your target market
• A brief description of your team
• A summary of your financials
• Your funding requirements (if you are raising money)

Dig Deeper: How to write an effective executive summary

Products and services description

This is where you describe exactly what you’re selling, and how it solves a problem for your target market. The best way to organize this part of your plan is to start by describing the problem that exists for your customers. After that, you can describe how you plan to solve that problem with your product or service. 

This is usually called a problem and solution statement .

To truly showcase the value of your products and services, you need to craft a compelling narrative around your offerings. How will your product or service transform your customers’ lives or jobs? A strong narrative will draw in your readers.

This is also the part of the business plan to discuss any competitive advantages you may have, like specific intellectual property or patents that protect your product. If you have any initial sales, contracts, or other evidence that your product or service is likely to sell, include that information as well. It will show that your idea has traction , which can help convince readers that your plan has a high chance of success.

Market analysis

Your target market is a description of the type of people that you plan to sell to. You might even have multiple target markets, depending on your business. 

A market analysis is the part of your plan where you bring together all of the information you know about your target market. Basically, it’s a thorough description of who your customers are and why they need what you’re selling. You’ll also include information about the growth of your market and your industry .

Try to be as specific as possible when you describe your market. 

Include information such as age, income level, and location—these are what’s called “demographics.” If you can, also describe your market’s interests and habits as they relate to your business—these are “psychographics.” 

Related: Target market examples

Essentially, you want to include any knowledge you have about your customers that is relevant to how your product or service is right for them. With a solid target market, it will be easier to create a sales and marketing plan that will reach your customers. That’s because you know who they are, what they like to do, and the best ways to reach them.

Next, provide any additional information you have about your market. 

What is the size of your market ? Is the market growing or shrinking? Ideally, you’ll want to demonstrate that your market is growing over time, and also explain how your business is positioned to take advantage of any expected changes in your industry.

Dig Deeper: Learn how to write a market analysis

Competitive analysis

Part of defining your business opportunity is determining what your competitive advantage is. To do this effectively, you need to know as much about your competitors as your target customers. 

Every business has some form of competition. If you don’t think you have competitors, then explore what alternatives there are in the market for your product or service. 

For example: In the early years of cars, their main competition was horses. For social media, the early competition was reading books, watching TV, and talking on the phone.

A good competitive analysis fully lays out the competitive landscape and then explains how your business is different. Maybe your products are better made, or cheaper, or your customer service is superior. Maybe your competitive advantage is your location – a wide variety of factors can ultimately give you an advantage.

Dig Deeper: How to write a competitive analysis for your business plan

Marketing and sales plan

The marketing and sales plan covers how you will position your product or service in the market, the marketing channels and messaging you will use, and your sales tactics. 

The best place to start with a marketing plan is with a positioning statement . 

This explains how your business fits into the overall market, and how you will explain the advantages of your product or service to customers. You’ll use the information from your competitive analysis to help you with your positioning. 

For example: You might position your company as the premium, most expensive but the highest quality option in the market. Or your positioning might focus on being locally owned and that shoppers support the local economy by buying your products.

Once you understand your positioning, you’ll bring this together with the information about your target market to create your marketing strategy . 

This is how you plan to communicate your message to potential customers. Depending on who your customers are and how they purchase products like yours, you might use many different strategies, from social media advertising to creating a podcast. Your marketing plan is all about how your customers discover who you are and why they should consider your products and services. 

While your marketing plan is about reaching your customers—your sales plan will describe the actual sales process once a customer has decided that they’re interested in what you have to offer. 

If your business requires salespeople and a long sales process, describe that in this section. If your customers can “self-serve” and just make purchases quickly on your website, describe that process. 

A good sales plan picks up where your marketing plan leaves off. The marketing plan brings customers in the door and the sales plan is how you close the deal.

Together, these specific plans paint a picture of how you will connect with your target audience, and how you will turn them into paying customers.

Dig deeper: What to include in your sales and marketing plan

Business operations

The operations section describes the necessary requirements for your business to run smoothly. It’s where you talk about how your business works and what day-to-day operations look like. 

Depending on how your business is structured, your operations plan may include elements of the business like:

• Supply chain management
• Manufacturing processes
• Equipment and technology
• Distribution

Some businesses distribute their products and reach their customers through large retailers like Amazon.com, Walmart, Target, and grocery store chains. 

These businesses should review how this part of their business works. The plan should discuss the logistics and costs of getting products onto store shelves and any potential hurdles the business may have to overcome.

If your business is much simpler than this, that’s OK. This section of your business plan can be either extremely short or more detailed, depending on the type of business you are building.

For businesses selling services, such as physical therapy or online software, you can use this section to describe the technology you’ll leverage, what goes into your service, and who you will partner with to deliver your services.

Dig Deeper: Learn how to write the operations chapter of your plan

Key milestones and metrics

Although it’s not required to complete your business plan, mapping out key business milestones and the metrics can be incredibly useful for measuring your success.

Good milestones clearly lay out the parameters of the task and set expectations for their execution. You’ll want to include:

• A description of each task
• The proposed due date
• Who is responsible for each task

If you have a budget, you can include projected costs to hit each milestone. You don’t need extensive project planning in this section—just list key milestones you want to hit and when you plan to hit them. This is your overall business roadmap. 

Possible milestones might be:

• Website launch date
• Store or office opening date
• First significant sales
• Break even date
• Business licenses and approvals

You should also discuss the key numbers you will track to determine your success. Some common metrics worth tracking include:

• Conversion rates
• Customer acquisition costs
• Profit per customer
• Repeat purchases

It’s perfectly fine to start with just a few metrics and grow the number you are tracking over time. You also may find that some metrics simply aren’t relevant to your business and can narrow down what you’re tracking.

Dig Deeper: How to use milestones in your business plan

Organization and management team

Investors don’t just look for great ideas—they want to find great teams. Use this chapter to describe your current team and who you need to hire . You should also provide a quick overview of your location and history if you’re already up and running.

Briefly highlight the relevant experiences of each key team member in the company. It’s important to make the case for why yours is the right team to turn an idea into a reality. 

Do they have the right industry experience and background? Have members of the team had entrepreneurial successes before? 

If you still need to hire key team members, that’s OK. Just note those gaps in this section.

Your company overview should also include a summary of your company’s current business structure . The most common business structures include:

• Sole proprietor
• Partnership

Be sure to provide an overview of how the business is owned as well. Does each business partner own an equal portion of the business? How is ownership divided? 

Potential lenders and investors will want to know the structure of the business before they will consider a loan or investment.

Dig Deeper: How to write about your company structure and team

Financial plan

Last, but certainly not least, is your financial plan chapter. 

Entrepreneurs often find this section the most daunting. But, business financials for most startups are less complicated than you think, and a business degree is certainly not required to build a solid financial forecast. 

A typical financial forecast in a business plan includes the following:

• Sales forecast : An estimate of the sales expected over a given period. You’ll break down your forecast into the key revenue streams that you expect to have.
• Expense budget : Your planned spending such as personnel costs , marketing expenses, and taxes.
• Profit & Loss : Brings together your sales and expenses and helps you calculate planned profits.
• Cash Flow : Shows how cash moves into and out of your business. It can predict how much cash you’ll have on hand at any given point in the future.
• Balance Sheet : A list of the assets, liabilities, and equity in your company. In short, it provides an overview of the financial health of your business. 

A strong business plan will include a description of assumptions about the future, and potential risks that could impact the financial plan. Including those will be especially important if you’re writing a business plan to pursue a loan or other investment.

Dig Deeper: How to create financial forecasts and budgets

This is the place for additional data, charts, or other information that supports your plan.

Including an appendix can significantly enhance the credibility of your plan by showing readers that you’ve thoroughly considered the details of your business idea, and are backing your ideas up with solid data.

Just remember that the information in the appendix is meant to be supplementary. Your business plan should stand on its own, even if the reader skips this section.

Dig Deeper : What to include in your business plan appendix

Optional: Business plan cover page

Adding a business plan cover page can make your plan, and by extension your business, seem more professional in the eyes of potential investors, lenders, and partners. It serves as the introduction to your document and provides necessary contact information for stakeholders to reference.

Your cover page should be simple and include:

• Company logo
• Business name
• Value proposition (optional)
• Business plan title
• Completion and/or update date
• Address and contact information
• Confidentiality statement

Just remember, the cover page is optional. If you decide to include it, keep it very simple and only spend a short amount of time putting it together.

Dig Deeper: How to create a business plan cover page

How to use AI to help write your business plan

Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT can speed up the business plan writing process and help you think through concepts like market segmentation and competition. These tools are especially useful for taking ideas that you provide and converting them into polished text for your business plan.

The best way to use AI for your business plan is to leverage it as a collaborator , not a replacement for human creative thinking and ingenuity. 

AI can come up with lots of ideas and act as a brainstorming partner. It’s up to you to filter through those ideas and figure out which ones are realistic enough to resonate with your customers. 

There are pros and cons of using AI to help with your business plan . So, spend some time understanding how it can be most helpful before just outsourcing the job to AI.

Learn more: 10 AI prompts you need to write a business plan

• Writing tips and strategies

To help streamline the business plan writing process, here are a few tips and key questions to answer to make sure you get the most out of your plan and avoid common mistakes .  

Determine why you are writing a business plan

Knowing why you are writing a business plan will determine your approach to your planning project. 

For example: If you are writing a business plan for yourself, or just to use inside your own business , you can probably skip the section about your team and organizational structure. 

If you’re raising money, you’ll want to spend more time explaining why you’re looking to raise the funds and exactly how you will use them.

Regardless of how you intend to use your business plan , think about why you are writing and what you’re trying to get out of the process before you begin.

Keep things concise

Probably the most important tip is to keep your business plan short and simple. There are no prizes for long business plans . The longer your plan is, the less likely people are to read it. 

So focus on trimming things down to the essentials your readers need to know. Skip the extended, wordy descriptions and instead focus on creating a plan that is easy to read —using bullets and short sentences whenever possible.

Have someone review your business plan

Writing a business plan in a vacuum is never a good idea. Sometimes it’s helpful to zoom out and check if your plan makes sense to someone else. You also want to make sure that it’s easy to read and understand.

Don’t wait until your plan is “done” to get a second look. Start sharing your plan early, and find out from readers what questions your plan leaves unanswered. This early review cycle will help you spot shortcomings in your plan and address them quickly, rather than finding out about them right before you present your plan to a lender or investor.

If you need a more detailed review, you may want to explore hiring a professional plan writer to thoroughly examine it.

Use a free business plan template and business plan examples to get started

Knowing what information to include in a business plan is sometimes not quite enough. If you’re struggling to get started or need additional guidance, it may be worth using a business plan template. 

There are plenty of great options available (we’ve rounded up our 8 favorites to streamline your search).

But, if you’re looking for a free downloadable business plan template , you can get one right now; download the template used by more than 1 million businesses. 

Or, if you just want to see what a completed business plan looks like, check out our library of over 550 free business plan examples . 

We even have a growing list of industry business planning guides with tips for what to focus on depending on your business type.

Common pitfalls and how to avoid them

It’s easy to make mistakes when you’re writing your business plan. Some entrepreneurs get sucked into the writing and research process, and don’t focus enough on actually getting their business started. 

Here are a few common mistakes and how to avoid them:

Not talking to your customers : This is one of the most common mistakes. It’s easy to assume that your product or service is something that people want. Before you invest too much in your business and too much in the planning process, make sure you talk to your prospective customers and have a good understanding of their needs.

• Overly optimistic sales and profit forecasts: By nature, entrepreneurs are optimistic about the future. But it’s good to temper that optimism a little when you’re planning, and make sure your forecasts are grounded in reality. 
• Spending too much time planning: Yes, planning is crucial. But you also need to get out and talk to customers, build prototypes of your product and figure out if there’s a market for your idea. Make sure to balance planning with building.
• Not revising the plan: Planning is useful, but nothing ever goes exactly as planned. As you learn more about what’s working and what’s not—revise your plan, your budgets, and your revenue forecast. Doing so will provide a more realistic picture of where your business is going, and what your financial needs will be moving forward.
• Not using the plan to manage your business: A good business plan is a management tool. Don’t just write it and put it on the shelf to collect dust – use it to track your progress and help you reach your goals.
• Presenting your business plan

The planning process forces you to think through every aspect of your business and answer questions that you may not have thought of. That’s the real benefit of writing a business plan – the knowledge you gain about your business that you may not have been able to discover otherwise.

With all of this knowledge, you’re well prepared to convert your business plan into a pitch presentation to present your ideas. 

A pitch presentation is a summary of your plan, just hitting the highlights and key points. It’s the best way to present your business plan to investors and team members.

Dig Deeper: Learn what key slides should be included in your pitch deck

Use your business plan to manage your business

One of the biggest benefits of planning is that it gives you a tool to manage your business better. With a revenue forecast, expense budget, and projected cash flow, you know your targets and where you are headed.

And yet, nothing ever goes exactly as planned – it’s the nature of business.

That’s where using your plan as a management tool comes in. The key to leveraging it for your business is to review it periodically and compare your forecasts and projections to your actual results.

Start by setting up a regular time to review the plan – a monthly review is a good starting point. During this review, answer questions like:

• Did you meet your sales goals?
• Is spending following your budget?
• Has anything gone differently than what you expected?

Now that you see whether you’re meeting your goals or are off track, you can make adjustments and set new targets. 

Maybe you’re exceeding your sales goals and should set new, more aggressive goals. In that case, maybe you should also explore more spending or hiring more employees. 

Or maybe expenses are rising faster than you projected. If that’s the case, you would need to look at where you can cut costs.

A plan, and a method for comparing your plan to your actual results , is the tool you need to steer your business toward success.

Learn More: How to run a regular plan review

Free business plan templates and examples

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Free business plan template

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How to write a business plan FAQ

What is a business plan?

A document that describes your business , the products and services you sell, and the customers that you sell to. It explains your business strategy, how you’re going to build and grow your business, what your marketing strategy is, and who your competitors are.

What are the benefits of a business plan?

A business plan helps you understand where you want to go with your business and what it will take to get there. It reduces your overall risk, helps you uncover your business’s potential, attracts investors, and identifies areas for growth.

Having a business plan ultimately makes you more confident as a business owner and more likely to succeed for a longer period of time.

What are the 7 steps of a business plan?

The seven steps to writing a business plan include:

• Write a brief executive summary
• Describe your products and services.
• Conduct market research and compile data into a cohesive market analysis.
• Describe your marketing and sales strategy.
• Outline your organizational structure and management team.
• Develop financial projections for sales, revenue, and cash flow.
• Add any additional documents to your appendix.

What are the 5 most common business plan mistakes?

There are plenty of mistakes that can be made when writing a business plan. However, these are the 5 most common that you should do your best to avoid:

• 1. Not taking the planning process seriously.
• Having unrealistic financial projections or incomplete financial information.
• Inconsistent information or simple mistakes.
• Failing to establish a sound business model.
• Not having a defined purpose for your business plan.

What questions should be answered in a business plan?

Writing a business plan is all about asking yourself questions about your business and being able to answer them through the planning process. You’ll likely be asking dozens and dozens of questions for each section of your plan.

However, these are the key questions you should ask and answer with your business plan:

• How will your business make money?
• Is there a need for your product or service?
• Who are your customers?
• How are you different from the competition?
• How will you reach your customers?
• How will you measure success?

How long should a business plan be?

The length of your business plan fully depends on what you intend to do with it. From the SBA and traditional lender point of view, a business plan needs to be whatever length necessary to fully explain your business. This means that you prove the viability of your business, show that you understand the market, and have a detailed strategy in place.

If you intend to use your business plan for internal management purposes, you don’t necessarily need a full 25-50 page business plan. Instead, you can start with a one-page plan to get all of the necessary information in place.

What are the different types of business plans?

While all business plans cover similar categories, the style and function fully depend on how you intend to use your plan. Here are a few common business plan types worth considering.

Traditional business plan: The tried-and-true traditional business plan is a formal document meant to be used when applying for funding or pitching to investors. This type of business plan follows the outline above and can be anywhere from 10-50 pages depending on the amount of detail included, the complexity of your business, and what you include in your appendix.

Business model canvas: The business model canvas is a one-page template designed to demystify the business planning process. It removes the need for a traditional, copy-heavy business plan, in favor of a single-page outline that can help you and outside parties better explore your business idea.

One-page business plan: This format is a simplified version of the traditional plan that focuses on the core aspects of your business. You’ll typically stick with bullet points and single sentences. It’s most useful for those exploring ideas, needing to validate their business model, or who need an internal plan to help them run and manage their business.

Lean Plan: The Lean Plan is less of a specific document type and more of a methodology. It takes the simplicity and styling of the one-page business plan and turns it into a process for you to continuously plan, test, review, refine, and take action based on performance. It’s faster, keeps your plan concise, and ensures that your plan is always up-to-date.

What’s the difference between a business plan and a strategic plan?

A business plan covers the “who” and “what” of your business. It explains what your business is doing right now and how it functions. The strategic plan explores long-term goals and explains “how” the business will get there. It encourages you to look more intently toward the future and how you will achieve your vision.

However, when approached correctly, your business plan can actually function as a strategic plan as well. If kept lean, you can define your business, outline strategic steps, and track ongoing operations all with a single plan.

Noah is the COO at Palo Alto Software, makers of the online business plan app LivePlan. He started his career at Yahoo! and then helped start the user review site Epinions.com. From there he started a software distribution business in the UK before coming to Palo Alto Software to run the marketing and product teams.

Table of Contents

• Use AI to help write your plan
• Common planning mistakes
• Manage with your business plan
• Templates and examples

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What Is a Business Plan? Definition and Planning Essentials Explained

Posted february 21, 2022 by kody wirth.

What is a business plan? It’s the roadmap for your business. The outline of your goals, objectives, and the steps you’ll take to get there. It describes the structure of your organization, how it operates, as well as the financial expectations and actual performance. 

A business plan can help you explore ideas, successfully start a business, manage operations, and pursue growth. In short, a business plan is a lot of different things. It’s more than just a stack of paper and can be one of your most effective tools as a business owner. 

Let’s explore the basics of business planning, the structure of a traditional plan, your planning options, and how you can use your plan to succeed. 

What is a business plan?

A business plan is a document that explains how your business operates. It summarizes your business structure, objectives, milestones, and financial performance. Again, it’s a guide that helps you, and anyone else, better understand how your business will succeed.  

Why do you need a business plan?

The primary purpose of a business plan is to help you understand the direction of your business and the steps it will take to get there. Having a solid business plan can help you grow up to 30% faster and according to our own 2021 Small Business research working on a business plan increases confidence regarding business health—even in the midst of a crisis. 

These benefits are directly connected to how writing a business plan makes you more informed and better prepares you for entrepreneurship. It helps you reduce risk and avoid pursuing potentially poor ideas. You’ll also be able to more easily uncover your business’s potential. By regularly returning to your plan you can understand what parts of your strategy are working and those that are not.

That just scratches the surface for why having a plan is valuable. Check out our full write-up for fifteen more reasons why you need a business plan .  

What can you do with your plan?

So what can you do with a business plan once you’ve created it? It can be all too easy to write a plan and just let it be. Here are just a few ways you can leverage your plan to benefit your business.

Test an idea

Writing a plan isn’t just for those that are ready to start a business. It’s just as valuable for those that have an idea and want to determine if it’s actually possible or not. By writing a plan to explore the validity of an idea, you are working through the process of understanding what it would take to be successful. 

The market and competitive research alone can tell you a lot about your idea. Is the marketplace too crowded? Is the solution you have in mind not really needed? Add in the exploration of milestones, potential expenses, and the sales needed to attain profitability and you can paint a pretty clear picture of the potential of your business.

Create a professional business plan

Using ai and step-by-step instructions.

Secure funding

Validate ideas

Build a strategy

Document your strategy and goals

For those starting or managing a business understanding where you’re going and how you’re going to get there are vital. Writing your plan helps you do that. It ensures that you are considering all aspects of your business, know what milestones you need to hit, and can effectively make adjustments if that doesn’t happen. 

With a plan in place, you’ll have an idea of where you want your business to go as well as how you’ve performed in the past. This alone better prepares you to take on challenges, review what you’ve done before, and make the right adjustments.

Pursue funding

Even if you do not intend to pursue funding right away, having a business plan will prepare you for it. It will ensure that you have all of the information necessary to submit a loan application and pitch to investors. So, rather than scrambling to gather documentation and write a cohesive plan once it’s relevant, you can instead keep your plan up-to-date and attempt to attain funding. Just add a use of funds report to your financial plan and you’ll be ready to go.

The benefits of having a plan don’t stop there. You can then use your business plan to help you manage the funding you receive. You’ll not only be able to easily track and forecast how you’ll use your funds but easily report on how it’s been used. 

Better manage your business

A solid business plan isn’t meant to be something you do once and forget about. Instead, it should be a useful tool that you can regularly use to analyze performance, make strategic decisions, and anticipate future scenarios. It’s a document that you should regularly update and adjust as you go to better fit the actual state of your business.

Doing so makes it easier to understand what’s working and what’s not. It helps you understand if you’re truly reaching your goals or if you need to make further adjustments. Having your plan in place makes that process quicker, more informative, and leaves you with far more time to actually spend running your business.

What should your business plan include?

The content and structure of your business plan should include anything that will help you use it effectively. That being said, there are some key elements that you should cover and that investors will expect to see. 

Executive summary

The executive summary is a simple overview of your business and your overall plan. It should serve as a standalone document that provides enough detail for anyone—including yourself, team members, or investors—to fully understand your business strategy. Make sure to cover the problem you’re solving, a description of your product or service, your target market, organizational structure, a financial summary, and any necessary funding requirements.

This will be the first part of your plan but it’s easiest to write it after you’ve created your full plan.

Products & Services

When describing your products or services, you need to start by outlining the problem you’re solving and why what you offer is valuable. This is where you’ll also address current competition in the market and any competitive advantages your products or services bring to the table. Lastly, be sure to outline the steps or milestones that you’ll need to hit to successfully launch your business. If you’ve already hit some initial milestones, like taking pre-orders or early funding, be sure to include it here to further prove the validity of your business. 

Market analysis

A market analysis is a qualitative and quantitative assessment of the current market you’re entering or competing in. It helps you understand the overall state and potential of the industry, who your ideal customers are, the positioning of your competition, and how you intend to position your own business. This helps you better explore the long-term trends of the market, what challenges to expect, and how you will need to initially introduce and even price your products or services.

Check out our full guide for how to conduct a market analysis in just four easy steps .  

Marketing & sales

Here you detail how you intend to reach your target market. This includes your sales activities, general pricing plan, and the beginnings of your marketing strategy. If you have any branding elements, sample marketing campaigns, or messaging available—this is the place to add it. 

Additionally, it may be wise to include a SWOT analysis that demonstrates your business or specific product/service position. This will showcase how you intend to leverage sales and marketing channels to deal with competitive threats and take advantage of any opportunities.

Check out our full write-up to learn how to create a cohesive marketing strategy for your business. 

Organization & management

This section addresses the legal structure of your business, your current team, and any gaps that need to be filled. Depending on your business type and longevity, you’ll also need to include your location, ownership information, and business history. Basically, add any information that helps explain your organizational structure and how you operate. This section is particularly important for pitching to investors but should be included even if attempted funding is not in your immediate future.

Financial projections

Possibly the most important piece of your plan, your financials section is vital for showcasing the viability of your business. It also helps you establish a baseline to measure against and makes it easier to make ongoing strategic decisions as your business grows. This may seem complex on the surface, but it can be far easier than you think. 

Focus on building solid forecasts, keep your categories simple, and lean on assumptions. You can always return to this section to add more details and refine your financial statements as you operate. 

Here are the statements you should include in your financial plan:

• Sales and revenue projections
• Profit and loss statement
• Cash flow statement
• Balance sheet

The appendix is where you add additional detail, documentation, or extended notes that support the other sections of your plan. Don’t worry about adding this section at first and only add documentation that you think will be beneficial for anyone reading your plan.

Types of business plans explained

While all business plans cover similar categories, the style and function fully depend on how you intend to use your plan. So, to get the most out of your plan, it’s best to find a format that suits your needs. Here are a few common business plan types worth considering. 

Traditional business plan

The tried-and-true traditional business plan is a formal document meant to be used for external purposes. Typically this is the type of plan you’ll need when applying for funding or pitching to investors. It can also be used when training or hiring employees, working with vendors, or any other situation where the full details of your business must be understood by another individual. 

This type of business plan follows the outline above and can be anywhere from 10-50 pages depending on the amount of detail included, the complexity of your business, and what you include in your appendix. We recommend only starting with this business plan format if you plan to immediately pursue funding and already have a solid handle on your business information. 

Business model canvas

The business model canvas is a one-page template designed to demystify the business planning process. It removes the need for a traditional, copy-heavy business plan, in favor of a single-page outline that can help you and outside parties better explore your business idea. 

The structure ditches a linear structure in favor of a cell-based template. It encourages you to build connections between every element of your business. It’s faster to write out and update, and much easier for you, your team, and anyone else to visualize your business operations. This is really best for those exploring their business idea for the first time, but keep in mind that it can be difficult to actually validate your idea this way as well as adapt it into a full plan.

One-page business plan

The true middle ground between the business model canvas and a traditional business plan is the one-page business plan. This format is a simplified version of the traditional plan that focuses on the core aspects of your business. It basically serves as a beefed-up pitch document and can be finished as quickly as the business model canvas.

By starting with a one-page plan, you give yourself a minimal document to build from. You’ll typically stick with bullet points and single sentences making it much easier to elaborate or expand sections into a longer-form business plan. This plan type is useful for those exploring ideas, needing to validate their business model, or who need an internal plan to help them run and manage their business.

Now, the option that we here at LivePlan recommend is the Lean Plan . This is less of a specific document type and more of a methodology. It takes the simplicity and styling of the one-page business plan and turns it into a process for you to continuously plan, test, review, refine, and take action based on performance.

It holds all of the benefits of the single-page plan, including the potential to complete it in as little as 27-minutes . However, it’s even easier to convert into a full plan thanks to how heavily it’s tied to your financials. The overall goal of Lean Planning isn’t to just produce documents that you use once and shelve. Instead, the Lean Planning process helps you build a healthier company that thrives in times of growth and stable through times of crisis.

It’s faster, keeps your plan concise, and ensures that your plan is always up-to-date.

Try the LivePlan Method for Lean Business Planning

Now that you know the basics of business planning, it’s time to get started. Again we recommend leveraging a Lean Plan for a faster, easier, and far more useful planning process. 

To get familiar with the Lean Plan format, you can download our free Lean Plan template . However, if you want to elevate your ability to create and use your lean plan even further, you may want to explore LivePlan. 

It features step-by-step guidance that ensures you cover everything necessary while reducing the time spent on formatting and presenting. You’ll also gain access to financial forecasting tools that propel you through the process. Finally, it will transform your plan into a management tool that will help you easily compare your forecasts to your actual results. 

Check out how LivePlan streamlines Lean Planning by downloading our Kickstart Your Business ebook .

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Small Business Trends

How to start an organizing business, the professional organizing industry, what is a professional organizer.

Picture someone who steps into chaos and leaves behind order – that’s your professional organizer. But it’s not all about color-coded books and perfectly folded shirts. These are the artists of efficiency, offering services that range from decluttering homes to setting up seamless filing systems in offices. The ideal organizer is a cocktail of empathy, patience, and problem-solving flair, topped with a knack for practical aesthetics.

The Benefits of Running Your Own Professional Organizing Business

Starting an organizing business: key steps, market research and feasibility study.

Building a Business Plan

Legalities, Licensing, and Business Insurance

Setting up your business infrastructure, branding and marketing your organizing business, building a portfolio and gathering testimonials for your home organizing business, tips for a successful home organizing business, continuous learning, networking and collaboration, managing client expectations, faqs: how to start an organizing business, is an organizing business profitable.

Absolutely! With the increasing demand for home organization, there’s real potential for profitability. However, like any business, a professional organizing business depends on your pricing, number of clients, and operating costs. For more detailed information, refer to the business startup checklist .

How much money is needed to start an organizing business?

How can organizing professionals set their rates, is an organizing business a good side hustle.

Definitely! Its flexibility makes it an ideal side hustle. You can schedule clients around your availability, scaling up or down as your schedule permits.

Are there any training courses for a home organizing career?

How to make a business plan

Table of Contents

How to make a good business plan: step-by-step guide.

A business plan is a strategic roadmap used to navigate the challenging journey of entrepreneurship. It's the foundation upon which you build a successful business.

A well-crafted business plan can help you define your vision, clarify your goals, and identify potential problems before they arise.

But where do you start? How do you create a business plan that sets you up for success?

This article will explore the step-by-step process of creating a comprehensive business plan.

What is a business plan?

A business plan is a formal document that outlines a business's objectives, strategies, and operational procedures. It typically includes the following information about a company:

Products or services

Target market

Competitors

Marketing and sales strategies

Financial plan

Management team

A business plan serves as a roadmap for a company's success and provides a blueprint for its growth and development. It helps entrepreneurs and business owners organize their ideas, evaluate the feasibility, and identify potential challenges and opportunities.

As well as serving as a guide for business owners, a business plan can attract investors and secure funding. It demonstrates the company's understanding of the market, its ability to generate revenue and profits, and its strategy for managing risks and achieving success.

Business plan vs. business model canvas

A business plan may seem similar to a business model canvas, but each document serves a different purpose.

A business model canvas is a high-level overview that helps entrepreneurs and business owners quickly test and iterate their ideas. It is often a one-page document that briefly outlines the following:

Key partnerships

Key activities

Key propositions

Customer relationships

Customer segments

Key resources

Cost structure

Revenue streams

On the other hand, a Business Plan Template provides a more in-depth analysis of a company's strategy and operations. It is typically a lengthy document and requires significant time and effort to develop.

A business model shouldn’t replace a business plan, and vice versa. Business owners should lay the foundations and visually capture the most important information with a Business Model Canvas Template . Because this is a fast and efficient way to communicate a business idea, a business model canvas is a good starting point before developing a more comprehensive business plan.

A business plan can aim to secure funding from investors or lenders, while a business model canvas communicates a business idea to potential customers or partners.

Why is a business plan important?

A business plan is crucial for any entrepreneur or business owner wanting to increase their chances of success.

Here are some of the many benefits of having a thorough business plan.

Helps to define the business goals and objectives

A business plan encourages you to think critically about your goals and objectives. Doing so lets you clearly understand what you want to achieve and how you plan to get there.

A well-defined set of goals, objectives, and key results also provides a sense of direction and purpose, which helps keep business owners focused and motivated.

Guides decision-making

A business plan requires you to consider different scenarios and potential problems that may arise in your business. This awareness allows you to devise strategies to deal with these issues and avoid pitfalls.

With a clear plan, entrepreneurs can make informed decisions aligning with their overall business goals and objectives. This helps reduce the risk of making costly mistakes and ensures they make decisions with long-term success in mind.

Attracts investors and secures funding

Investors and lenders often require a business plan before considering investing in your business. A document that outlines the company's goals, objectives, and financial forecasts can help instill confidence in potential investors and lenders.

A well-written business plan demonstrates that you have thoroughly thought through your business idea and have a solid plan for success.

Identifies potential challenges and risks

A business plan requires entrepreneurs to consider potential challenges and risks that could impact their business. For example:

Is there enough demand for my product or service?

Will I have enough capital to start my business?

Is the market oversaturated with too many competitors?

What will happen if my marketing strategy is ineffective?

By identifying these potential challenges, entrepreneurs can develop strategies to mitigate risks and overcome challenges. This can reduce the likelihood of costly mistakes and ensure the business is well-positioned to take on any challenges.

Provides a basis for measuring success

A business plan serves as a framework for measuring success by providing clear goals and financial projections . Entrepreneurs can regularly refer to the original business plan as a benchmark to measure progress. By comparing the current business position to initial forecasts, business owners can answer questions such as:

Are we where we want to be at this point?

Did we achieve our goals?

If not, why not, and what do we need to do?

After assessing whether the business is meeting its objectives or falling short, business owners can adjust their strategies as needed.

How to make a business plan step by step

The steps below will guide you through the process of creating a business plan and what key components you need to include.

1. Create an executive summary

Start with a brief overview of your entire plan. The executive summary should cover your business plan's main points and key takeaways.

Keep your executive summary concise and clear with the Executive Summary Template . The simple design helps readers understand the crux of your business plan without reading the entire document.

2. Write your company description

Provide a detailed explanation of your company. Include information on what your company does, the mission statement, and your vision for the future.

Provide additional background information on the history of your company, the founders, and any notable achievements or milestones.

3. Conduct a market analysis

Conduct an in-depth analysis of your industry, competitors, and target market. This is best done with a SWOT analysis to identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Next, identify your target market's needs, demographics, and behaviors.

Use the Competitive Analysis Template to brainstorm answers to simple questions like:

What does the current market look like?

Who are your competitors?

What are they offering?

What will give you a competitive advantage?

Who is your target market?

What are they looking for and why?

How will your product or service satisfy a need?

These questions should give you valuable insights into the current market and where your business stands.

4. Describe your products and services

Provide detailed information about your products and services. This includes pricing information, product features, and any unique selling points.

Use the Product/Market Fit Template to explain how your products meet the needs of your target market. Describe what sets them apart from the competition.

5. Design a marketing and sales strategy

Outline how you plan to promote and sell your products. Your marketing strategy and sales strategy should include information about your:

Pricing strategy

Advertising and promotional tactics

Sales channels

The Go to Market Strategy Template is a great way to visually map how you plan to launch your product or service in a new or existing market.

6. Determine budget and financial projections

Document detailed information on your business’ finances. Describe the current financial position of the company and how you expect the finances to play out.

Some details to include in this section are:

Startup costs

Revenue projections

Profit and loss statement

Funding you have received or plan to receive

Strategy for raising funds

7. Set the organization and management structure

Define how your company is structured and who will be responsible for each aspect of the business. Use the Business Organizational Chart Template to visually map the company’s teams, roles, and hierarchy.

As well as the organization and management structure, discuss the legal structure of your business. Clarify whether your business is a corporation, partnership, sole proprietorship, or LLC.

8. Make an action plan

At this point in your business plan, you’ve described what you’re aiming for. But how are you going to get there? The Action Plan Template describes the following steps to move your business plan forward. Outline the next steps you plan to take to bring your business plan to fruition.

Types of business plans

Several types of business plans cater to different purposes and stages of a company's lifecycle. Here are some of the most common types of business plans.

Startup business plan

A startup business plan is typically an entrepreneur's first business plan. This document helps entrepreneurs articulate their business idea when starting a new business.

Not sure how to make a business plan for a startup? It’s pretty similar to a regular business plan, except the primary purpose of a startup business plan is to convince investors to provide funding for the business. A startup business plan also outlines the potential target market, product/service offering, marketing plan, and financial projections.

Strategic business plan

A strategic business plan is a long-term plan that outlines a company's overall strategy, objectives, and tactics. This type of strategic plan focuses on the big picture and helps business owners set goals and priorities and measure progress.

The primary purpose of a strategic business plan is to provide direction and guidance to the company's management team and stakeholders. The plan typically covers a period of three to five years.

Operational business plan

An operational business plan is a detailed document that outlines the day-to-day operations of a business. It focuses on the specific activities and processes required to run the business, such as:

Organizational structure

Staffing plan

Production plan

Quality control

Inventory management

Supply chain

The primary purpose of an operational business plan is to ensure that the business runs efficiently and effectively. It helps business owners manage their resources, track their performance, and identify areas for improvement.

Growth-business plan

A growth-business plan is a strategic plan that outlines how a company plans to expand its business. It helps business owners identify new market opportunities and increase revenue and profitability. The primary purpose of a growth-business plan is to provide a roadmap for the company's expansion and growth.

The 3 Horizons of Growth Template is a great tool to identify new areas of growth. This framework categorizes growth opportunities into three categories: Horizon 1 (core business), Horizon 2 (emerging business), and Horizon 3 (potential business).

One-page business plan

A one-page business plan is a condensed version of a full business plan that focuses on the most critical aspects of a business. It’s a great tool for entrepreneurs who want to quickly communicate their business idea to potential investors, partners, or employees.

A one-page business plan typically includes sections such as business concept, value proposition, revenue streams, and cost structure.

Best practices for how to make a good business plan

Here are some additional tips for creating a business plan:

Use a template

A template can help you organize your thoughts and effectively communicate your business ideas and strategies. Starting with a template can also save you time and effort when formatting your plan.

Miro’s extensive library of customizable templates includes all the necessary sections for a comprehensive business plan. With our templates, you can confidently present your business plans to stakeholders and investors.

Be practical

Avoid overestimating revenue projections or underestimating expenses. Your business plan should be grounded in practical realities like your budget, resources, and capabilities.

Be specific

Provide as much detail as possible in your business plan. A specific plan is easier to execute because it provides clear guidance on what needs to be done and how. Without specific details, your plan may be too broad or vague, making it difficult to know where to start or how to measure success.

Be thorough with your research

Conduct thorough research to fully understand the market, your competitors, and your target audience . By conducting thorough research, you can identify potential risks and challenges your business may face and develop strategies to mitigate them.

Get input from others

It can be easy to become overly focused on your vision and ideas, leading to tunnel vision and a lack of objectivity. By seeking input from others, you can identify potential opportunities you may have overlooked.

Review and revise regularly

A business plan is a living document. You should update it regularly to reflect market, industry, and business changes. Set aside time for regular reviews and revisions to ensure your plan remains relevant and effective.

Create a winning business plan to chart your path to success

Starting or growing a business can be challenging, but it doesn't have to be. Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting, a well-written business plan can make or break your business’ success.

The purpose of a business plan is more than just to secure funding and attract investors. It also serves as a roadmap for achieving your business goals and realizing your vision. With the right mindset, tools, and strategies, you can develop a visually appealing, persuasive business plan.

Ready to make an effective business plan that works for you? Check out our library of ready-made strategy and planning templates and chart your path to success.

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How to Write a Business Plan, Step by Step

Rosalie Murphy is a small-business writer at NerdWallet. Since 2021, she has covered business insurance, banking, credit cards and e-commerce software, and her reporting has been featured by The Associated Press, MarketWatch, Entrepreneur and many other publications. Rosalie holds a graduate certificate in Quantitative Business Management from Kent State University and is now pursuing an MBA. She is based in Chicago.

Ryan Lane is an editor on NerdWallet’s small-business team. He joined NerdWallet in 2019 as a student loans writer, serving as an authority on that topic after spending more than a decade at student loan guarantor American Student Assistance. In that role, Ryan co-authored the Student Loan Ranger blog in partnership with U.S. News & World Report, as well as wrote and edited content about education financing and financial literacy for multiple online properties, e-courses and more. Ryan also previously oversaw the production of life science journals as a managing editor for publisher Cell Press. Ryan is located in Rochester, New York.

Many or all of the products featured here are from our partners who compensate us. This influences which products we write about and where and how the product appears on a page. However, this does not influence our evaluations. Our opinions are our own. Here is a list of our partners and here's how we make money .

What is a business plan?

1. write an executive summary, 2. describe your company, 3. state your business goals, 4. describe your products and services, 5. do your market research, 6. outline your marketing and sales plan, 7. perform a business financial analysis, 8. make financial projections, 9. summarize how your company operates, 10. add any additional information to an appendix, business plan tips and resources.

A business plan outlines your business’s financial goals and explains how you’ll achieve them over the next three to five years. Here’s a step-by-step guide to writing a business plan that will offer a strong, detailed road map for your business.

LLC Formation

A business plan is a document that explains what your business does, how it makes money and who its customers are. Internally, writing a business plan should help you clarify your vision and organize your operations. Externally, you can share it with potential lenders and investors to show them you’re on the right track.

Business plans are living documents; it’s OK for them to change over time. Startups may update their business plans often as they figure out who their customers are and what products and services fit them best. Mature companies might only revisit their business plan every few years. Regardless of your business’s age, brush up this document before you apply for a business loan .

» Need help writing? Learn about the best business plan software .

This is your elevator pitch. It should include a mission statement, a brief description of the products or services your business offers and a broad summary of your financial growth plans.

Though the executive summary is the first thing your investors will read, it can be easier to write it last. That way, you can highlight information you’ve identified while writing other sections that go into more detail.

» MORE: How to write an executive summary in 6 steps

Next up is your company description. This should contain basic information like:

Your business’s registered name.

Address of your business location .

Names of key people in the business. Make sure to highlight unique skills or technical expertise among members of your team.

Your company description should also define your business structure — such as a sole proprietorship, partnership or corporation — and include the percent ownership that each owner has and the extent of each owner’s involvement in the company.

Lastly, write a little about the history of your company and the nature of your business now. This prepares the reader to learn about your goals in the next section.

» MORE: How to write a company overview for a business plan

The third part of a business plan is an objective statement. This section spells out what you’d like to accomplish, both in the near term and over the coming years.

If you’re looking for a business loan or outside investment, you can use this section to explain how the financing will help your business grow and how you plan to achieve those growth targets. The key is to provide a clear explanation of the opportunity your business presents to the lender.

For example, if your business is launching a second product line, you might explain how the loan will help your company launch that new product and how much you think sales will increase over the next three years as a result.

» MORE: How to write a successful business plan for a loan

In this section, go into detail about the products or services you offer or plan to offer.

You should include the following:

An explanation of how your product or service works.

The pricing model for your product or service.

The typical customers you serve.

Your supply chain and order fulfillment strategy.

You can also discuss current or pending trademarks and patents associated with your product or service.

Lenders and investors will want to know what sets your product apart from your competition. In your market analysis section , explain who your competitors are. Discuss what they do well, and point out what you can do better. If you’re serving a different or underserved market, explain that.

Here, you can address how you plan to persuade customers to buy your products or services, or how you will develop customer loyalty that will lead to repeat business.

Include details about your sales and distribution strategies, including the costs involved in selling each product .

» MORE: R e a d our complete guide to small business marketing

If you’re a startup, you may not have much information on your business financials yet. However, if you’re an existing business, you’ll want to include income or profit-and-loss statements, a balance sheet that lists your assets and debts, and a cash flow statement that shows how cash comes into and goes out of the company.

Accounting software may be able to generate these reports for you. It may also help you calculate metrics such as:

Net profit margin: the percentage of revenue you keep as net income.

Current ratio: the measurement of your liquidity and ability to repay debts.

Accounts receivable turnover ratio: a measurement of how frequently you collect on receivables per year.

This is a great place to include charts and graphs that make it easy for those reading your plan to understand the financial health of your business.

This is a critical part of your business plan if you’re seeking financing or investors. It outlines how your business will generate enough profit to repay the loan or how you will earn a decent return for investors.

Here, you’ll provide your business’s monthly or quarterly sales, expenses and profit estimates over at least a three-year period — with the future numbers assuming you’ve obtained a new loan.

Accuracy is key, so carefully analyze your past financial statements before giving projections. Your goals may be aggressive, but they should also be realistic.

NerdWallet’s picks for setting up your business finances:

The best business checking accounts .

The best business credit cards .

The best accounting software .

Before the end of your business plan, summarize how your business is structured and outline each team’s responsibilities. This will help your readers understand who performs each of the functions you’ve described above — making and selling your products or services — and how much each of those functions cost.

If any of your employees have exceptional skills, you may want to include their resumes to help explain the competitive advantage they give you.

Finally, attach any supporting information or additional materials that you couldn’t fit in elsewhere. That might include:

Licenses and permits.

Equipment leases.

Bank statements.

Details of your personal and business credit history, if you’re seeking financing.

If the appendix is long, you may want to consider adding a table of contents at the beginning of this section.

How much do you need?

with Fundera by NerdWallet

We’ll start with a brief questionnaire to better understand the unique needs of your business.

Once we uncover your personalized matches, our team will consult you on the process moving forward.

Here are some tips to write a detailed, convincing business plan:

Avoid over-optimism: If you’re applying for a business bank loan or professional investment, someone will be reading your business plan closely. Providing unreasonable sales estimates can hurt your chances of approval.

Proofread: Spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors can jump off the page and turn off lenders and prospective investors. If writing and editing aren't your strong suit, you may want to hire a professional business plan writer, copy editor or proofreader.

Use free resources: SCORE is a nonprofit association that offers a large network of volunteer business mentors and experts who can help you write or edit your business plan. The U.S. Small Business Administration’s Small Business Development Centers , which provide free business consulting and help with business plan development, can also be a resource.

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Professional Organizing Business

Back to All Business Ideas

How to Start Your Own Professional Organizing Business

Written by: Carolyn Young

Carolyn Young is a business writer who focuses on entrepreneurial concepts and the business formation. She has over 25 years of experience in business roles, and has authored several entrepreneurship textbooks.

Edited by: David Lepeska

David has been writing and learning about business, finance and globalization for a quarter-century, starting with a small New York consulting firm in the 1990s.

Published on January 5, 2022 Updated on July 3, 2024

Investment range

$2,050 - $5,500

Revenue potential

$78,000 - $260,000 p.a.

Time to build

0 – 3 months

Profit potential

$70,000 - $234,000 p.a.

Industry trend

People like to have nice things – a lot of things. So much so that for many people, those things get out of control, and clutter takes over their homes. Professional organizing is a service that solves that problem for consumers. If you are a meticulous person who knows how to control clutter, a professional organizing business is a great opportunity to build a profitable company.

Launching a professional organizing business will have its challenges, and will take time, preparation, and knowledge. This step-by-step guide is full of information and insight to put you on your way to organizing your new entrepreneurial home.

Looking to register your business? A limited liability company (LLC) is the best legal structure for new businesses because it is fast and simple.

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Step 1: Decide if the Business Is Right for You

Pros and cons.

Starting a professional organizing business has pros and cons you should consider before deciding if it’s right for you.

• Low Startup Costs – No equipment or office needed
• Great Profit Margin – Few ongoing expenses
• Broad Market – Both individuals and businesses could be customers
• Messy – People can be slobs and things will get dirty
• Patience Needed – People may not want to get rid of their junk

Professional organizing industry trends

Industry size and growth.

• Industry size and past growth – The US home organization market has grown more than 40% over the last decade.(( https://www.statista.com/statistics/622446/value-of-the-us-home-organization-market/ )) Analyst Research and Markets values the US home organization products market at $12.2 billion in 2021.(( https://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/5389715/us-home-organization-products-market-2021-2030 ))  
• Growth forecast – Between 2018 and 2028, demand for professional organizers is expected to grow 7% and create 9,600 job opportunities across the US.(( https://www.zippia.com/organizer-jobs/ ))
• Number of people employed – There are nearly 45,000 organizers employed in the US.(( https://www.zippia.com/organizer-jobs/demographics/ ))

Trends and challenges

Trends in professional organizing include:

• The aesthetics of organizing is becoming just as important as usability due to the social media influence. People are posting pictures of their closets and want them to be visually appealing.
• Professional organizing is becoming more of a science, considering the psychology of the customer and their needs. For example, some care more about what is most visible rather than making the most used items the easiest to reach.

Some challenges also exist in the professional organizing industry including:

• Big players are entering the industry such as The Container store, creating a more competitive environment.
• Barriers to entry into the industry are low, increasing the competitive environment even more.

What kind of people work in professional organizing?

• Gender – 53% of all organizers are female, while nearly 47% are male.(( https://www.zippia.com/organizer-jobs/demographics/#gender-statistics ))
• Average level of education – 62% of organizers hold a bachelor’s degree and 11% finished high school. Organizers usually study political science, business, or psychology. (( https://www.zippia.com/organizer-jobs/education/ ))
• Average age – The average age of organizers is 40+ years old.(( https://www.zippia.com/organizer-jobs/demographics/#age-statistics ))

How much does it cost to start a professional organizing business?

Startup costs for a professional organizing business range from about $2,000 to $5,000. The largest expenses are for a website set up and an initial marketing budget. The high end also includes professional organizing classes which are not required but can add to your credibility. You can take classes through the National Association of Productivity & Organizing Professionals (NAPO) . 

How much can you earn from a professional organizing business?

The average price that customers pay for an organizing job is about $500. The price will vary based on the size of the job and the time that it takes. Your profit margin should be around 90%. 

In your first year or two, you could do 3 organizing jobs per week, bringing in $78,000 in annual revenue. This would mean $70,000 in profit, assuming that 90% margin. As your brand gains recognition, sales could climb to 10 jobs per week. With expected annual revenue of $260,000, you would make about $234,000.

What barriers to entry are there?

There are a few barriers to entry for a professional organizing business. Your biggest challenges will be:

• You need to know good organizational methods
• It will take some marketing dollars to get a large customer base

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Step 2: hone your idea.

Now that you know what’s involved in starting a professional organizing business, it’s a good idea to hone your concept in preparation to enter a competitive market. 

Market research will give you the upper hand, even if you’re already positive that you have a perfect product or service. Conducting market research is important, because it can help you understand your customers better, who your competitors are, and your business landscape.

Why? Identify an opportunity

Research professional organizing businesses in your area to examine their services, price points, and customer reviews. You’re looking for a market gap to fill. For instance, maybe the local market is missing a professional business organizer. 

You might consider targeting a niche market by specializing in a certain aspect of your industry such as closet organization.

This could jumpstart your word-of-mouth marketing and attract clients right away. 

What? Determine your services

You need to determine what types of organizing services you will do. You could specialize in something like closets, or you could organize a variety of things including:

• Kitchen cabinets and pantries
• Business establishments
• Home offices

How much should you charge for professional organizing services?

Prices for organizing jobs range from $250 to $800 and average about $500. You should determine your prices based on the time that the job takes you. Prices should work out to an average of $50 to $100 per hour. Your ongoing expenses should be limited to fuel and marketing so you should aim for a profit margin of about 90%.

Once you know your costs, you can use this Step By Step profit margin calculator to determine your mark-up and final price point. Remember, the price you use at launch should be subject to change if warranted by the market.

Who? Identify your target market

Your target market will be broad, although the people that will be willing and able to pay for your services are probably more established. You can find them on sites like Facebook and LinkedIn. 

Where? Choose your business premises

In the early stages, you may want to run your business from home to keep costs low. But as your business grows, you’ll likely need to hire workers for various roles and may need to rent out an office. You can find commercial space to rent in your area on sites such as Craigslist , Crexi , and Instant Offices .

When choosing a commercial space, you may want to follow these rules of thumb:

• Central location accessible via public transport
• Ventilated and spacious, with good natural light
• Flexible lease that can be extended as your business grows
• Ready-to-use space with no major renovations or repairs needed

Step 3: Brainstorm a Professional Organizing Business Name

Here are some ideas for brainstorming your business name:

• Short, unique, and catchy names tend to stand out
• Names that are easy to say and spell tend to do better 
• Name should be relevant to your product or service offerings
• Ask around — family, friends, colleagues, social media — for suggestions
• Including keywords, such as “professional organizing” or “home organizing”, boosts SEO
• Name should allow for expansion, for ex: “TidyUp Solutions” over “Office Organizers”
• A location-based name can help establish a strong connection with your local community and help with the SEO but might hinder future expansion

Once you’ve got a list of potential names, visit the website of the US Patent and Trademark Office to make sure they are available for registration and check the availability of related domain names using our Domain Name Search tool. Using “.com” or “.org” sharply increases credibility, so it’s best to focus on these. 

Find a Domain

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Finally, make your choice among the names that pass this screening and go ahead with domain registration and social media account creation. Your business name is one of the key differentiators that sets your business apart. Once you pick your company name, and start with the branding, it is hard to change the business name. Therefore, it’s important to carefully consider your choice before you start a business entity.

Step 4: Create a Professional Organizing Business Plan

Here are the key components of a business plan:

• Executive Summary: Highlight the vision of your professional organizing business, its services, target market, and what will make it successful.
• Business Overview: Detail what organizing services your business will provide and the organizational problems it aims to solve.
• Product and Services: Describe the specific organizing packages you offer, like home decluttering, office systematization, or digital organization.
• Market Analysis: Examine the demand for organizing services in your area, including potential customer segments and their needs.
• Competitive Analysis: Identify other professional organizers in the market and how your business will differentiate itself in service quality, methods, and prices.
• Sales and Marketing: Outline how you will market your services and what strategies you will use to sell them, such as social media campaigns or partnerships.
• Management Team: Present the experience and qualifications of the team that will manage and grow the business.
• Operations Plan: Explain the process of how services will be delivered, client management, and workflow.
• Financial Plan: Summarize the financial aspects, including startup costs, pricing strategy, and projected financial growth.
• Appendix: Include any additional documents like client testimonials, detailed market research, or organizational certifications that support your business plan.

If you’ve never created a business plan yourself before, it can be an intimidating task. Consider hiring an experienced business plan writer to create a professional business plan for you.

Step 5: Register Your Business

Registering your business is an absolutely crucial step — it’s the prerequisite to paying taxes, raising capital, opening a bank account, and other guideposts on the road to getting a business up and running.

Plus, registration is exciting because it makes the entire process official. Once it’s complete, you’ll have your own business! 

Choose where to register your company

Your business location is important because it can affect taxes, legal requirements, and revenue. Most people will register their business in the state where they live, but if you are planning to expand, you might consider looking elsewhere, as some states could offer real advantages when it comes to professional organizing businesses. 

If you’re willing to move, you could really maximize your business! Keep in mind, it’s relatively easy to transfer your business to another state. 

Choose your business structure

Business entities come in several varieties, each with its pros and cons. The legal structure you choose for your professional organizing business will shape your taxes, personal liability, and business registration requirements, so choose wisely. 

Here are the main options:

• Sole Proprietorship – The most common structure for small businesses makes no legal distinction between company and owner. All income goes to the owner, who’s also liable for any debts, losses, or liabilities incurred by the business. The owner pays taxes on business income on his or her personal tax return.
• Partnership – Similar to a sole proprietorship, but for two or more people. Again, owners keep the profits and are liable for losses. The partners pay taxes on their share of business income on their personal tax returns.
• Limited Liability Company (LLC) – Combines the characteristics of corporations with those of sole proprietorships or partnerships. Again, the owners are not personally liable for debts.
• C Corp – Under this structure, the business is a distinct legal entity and the owner or owners are not personally liable for its debts. Owners take profits through shareholder dividends, rather than directly. The corporation pays taxes, and owners pay taxes on their dividends, which is sometimes referred to as double taxation.
• S Corp – An S-Corporation refers to the tax classification of the business but is not a business entity. An S-Corp can be either a corporation or an LLC , which just need to elect to be an S-Corp for tax status. In an S-Corp, income is passed through directly to shareholders, who pay taxes on their share of business income on their personal tax returns.

We recommend that new business owners choose LLC as it offers liability protection and pass-through taxation while being simpler to form than a corporation. You can form an LLC in as little as five minutes using an online LLC formation service. They will check that your business name is available before filing, submit your articles of organization , and answer any questions you might have.

Form Your LLC

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Step 6: Register for Taxes

The final step before you’re able to pay taxes is getting an Employer Identification Number , or EIN. You can file for your EIN online or by mail or fax: visit the IRS website to learn more. Keep in mind, if you’ve chosen to be a sole proprietorship you can simply use your social security number as your EIN. 

Once you have your EIN, you’ll need to choose your tax year. Financially speaking, your business will operate in a calendar year (January–December) or a fiscal year, a 12-month period that can start in any month. This will determine your tax cycle, while your business structure will determine which taxes you’ll pay.

The IRS website also offers a tax-payers checklist , and taxes can be filed online.

It is important to consult an accountant or other professional to help you with your taxes to ensure you are completing them correctly.

Step 7: Fund your Business

Securing financing is your next step and there are plenty of ways to raise capital:

• Bank loans : This is the most common method but getting approved requires a rock-solid business plan and strong credit history.
• SBA-guaranteed loans : The Small Business Administration can act as guarantor, helping gain that elusive bank approval via an SBA-guaranteed loan .
• Government grants : A handful of financial assistance programs help fund entrepreneurs. Visit Grants.gov to learn which might work for you.
• Friends and Family : Reach out to friends and family to provide a business loan or investment in your concept. It’s a good idea to have legal advice when doing so because SEC regulations apply.
• Personal : Self-fund your business via your savings or the sale of property or other assets.

For a professional organizing business you probably won’t need any outside financing and can just use your personal funds since startup costs are low.

Step 8: Apply for Licenses and Permits

Starting a professional organizing business requires obtaining a number of licenses and permits from local, state, and federal governments. You can become a certified professional organizer through NAPO to add credibility to your business. 

Federal regulations, licenses, and permits associated with starting your business include doing business as, health license and permit from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration ( OSHA ), trademarks, copyrights, patents, and other intellectual properties, as well as industry-specific licenses and permits. 

You may also need state-level licenses and local county or city-based licenses and permits. The license requirements and how to obtain them vary, so check the websites of your state, city, and county governments or contact the appropriate person to learn more. You could also check this SBA guide for your state’s requirements. 

This is not a step to be taken lightly, as failing to comply with legal requirements can result in hefty penalties.

If you feel overwhelmed by this step or don’t know how to begin, it might be a good idea to hire a professional to help you check all the legal boxes.

For peace of mind and to save time, we recommend using MyCorporation’s Business License Compliance Package . They will research the exact forms you need for your business and state, and provide them to you to make sure you’re fully compliant.

Step 9: Open a Business Bank Account

Before you start making money, you’ll need a place to keep it, and that requires opening a bank account . Keeping your business finances separate from your personal account makes it easy to file taxes and track your company’s income, so it’s worth doing even if you’re running your professional organizing business as a sole proprietorship. 

Opening a business bank account is quite simple, and similar to opening a personal one. Most major banks offer accounts tailored for businesses — just inquire at your preferred bank to learn about their rates and features.

Banks vary in terms of offerings, so it’s a good idea to examine your options and select the best plan for you. Once you choose your bank, bring in your EIN (or Social Security Number if you decide on a sole proprietorship), articles of incorporation, and other legal documents and open your new account. 

Step 10: Get Business Insurance

Business insurance is an area that often gets overlooked yet it can be vital to your success as an entrepreneur. Insurance protects you from unexpected events that can have a devastating impact on your business.

Here are some types of insurance to consider:

• General liability : The most comprehensive type of insurance, acting as a catch-all for many business elements that require coverage. If you get just one kind of insurance, this is it. It even protects against bodily injury and property damage.
• Business Property : Provides coverage for your equipment and supplies.
• Equipment Breakdown Insurance : Covers the cost of replacing or repairing equipment that has broken due to mechanical issues.
• Worker’s compensation : Provides compensation to employees injured on the job.
• Property : Covers your physical space, whether it is a cart, storefront, or office.
• Commercial auto : Protection for your company-owned vehicle.
• Professional liability : Protects against claims from a client who says they suffered a loss due to an error or omission in your work.
• Business owner’s policy (BOP) : This is an insurance plan that acts as an all-in-one insurance policy, a combination of any of the above insurance types.

Step 11: Prepare to Launch

As opening day nears, prepare for launch by reviewing and improving some key elements of your business. 

Essential software and tools

Being an entrepreneur often means wearing many hats, from marketing to sales to accounting, which can be overwhelming. Fortunately, many websites and digital tools are available to help simplify many business tasks. 

You can use industry-specific software, such as SMM Ware , to manage your sales, scheduling, quotes, and billing. 

• Popular web-based accounting programs for smaller businesses include Quickbooks , Freshbooks , and Xero . 
• If you’re unfamiliar with basic accounting, you may want to hire a professional, especially as you begin. The consequences for filing incorrect tax documents can be harsh, so accuracy is crucial.

Develop your website

Website development is crucial because your site is your online presence and needs to convince prospective clients of your expertise and professionalism.

You can create your own website using services like WordPress, Wix, or Squarespace . This route is very affordable, but figuring out how to build a website can be time-consuming. If you lack tech-savvy, you can hire a web designer or developer to create a custom website for your business.

They are unlikely to find your website, however, unless you follow Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) practices. These are steps that help pages rank higher in the results of top search engines like Google. 

Here are some powerful marketing strategies for your future business:

• Targeted Workshops and Seminars: Offer free or low-cost organizing workshops or seminars in your local community to showcase your expertise and attract potential clients.
• Collaborate with Realtors: Partner with real estate agents to offer your organizing services to clients preparing to sell their homes, emphasizing the appeal of an organized space.
• Social Media Challenges: Engage your audience on social media by creating organizing challenges or tips series, encouraging followers to share their progress and experiences.
• Client Testimonials and Before/After Photos: Build credibility by sharing success stories and visually striking before/after photos on your website and social media platforms to demonstrate the tangible benefits of your services.
• Referral Programs: Implement a referral program that rewards existing clients or partners who refer new business to you, fostering a network of advocates for your services.
• Local Partnerships: Establish partnerships with local businesses like furniture stores, cleaning services, or home improvement stores to cross-promote services and tap into each other’s customer base.
• Printed Materials and Direct Mail: Design eye-catching brochures, flyers, or postcards to distribute in local businesses or mail to targeted neighborhoods, showcasing your services and offering exclusive discounts.
• Online Presence Optimization: Enhance your online presence through search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, ensuring that your business ranks high in local search results.
• Community Sponsorships: Sponsor local events, sports teams, or community activities to increase brand visibility and demonstrate your commitment to the community.
• Specialized Packages or Seasonal Promotions: Create special packages or promotions during peak seasons, such as spring cleaning or back-to-school, to attract clients looking for specific organizational solutions.

Focus on USPs

Unique selling propositions, or USPs, are the characteristics of a product or service that sets it apart from the competition. Customers today are inundated with buying options, so you’ll have a real advantage if they are able to quickly grasp how your professional organizing business meets their needs or wishes. It’s wise to do all you can to ensure your USPs stand out on your website and in your marketing and promotional materials, stimulating buyer desire. 

Global pizza chain Domino’s is renowned for its USP: “Hot pizza in 30 minutes or less, guaranteed.” Signature USPs for your professional organizing business could be: 

• Make your closet shine
• Can’t find stuff? Let us put your house in order
• De-clutter your office and improve your business efficiency

You may not like to network or use personal connections for business gain. But your personal and professional networks likely offer considerable untapped business potential. Maybe that Facebook friend you met in college is now running a professional organizing business, or a LinkedIn contact of yours is connected to dozens of potential clients. Maybe your cousin or neighbor has been working in professional organizing for years and can offer invaluable insight and industry connections. 

The possibilities are endless, so it’s a good idea to review your personal and professional networks and reach out to those with possible links to or interest in professional organizing. You’ll probably generate new customers or find companies with which you could establish a partnership. 

Step 12: Build Your Team

If you’re starting out small from a home office, you may not need any employees. But as your business grows, you might want to hire an assistant to help you with organizing jobs.

Free-of-charge methods to recruit employees include posting ads on popular platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, or Jobs.com. You might also consider a premium recruitment option, such as advertising on Indeed , Glassdoor , or ZipRecruiter . Further, if you have the resources, you could consider hiring a recruitment agency to help you find talent. 

Step 13: Run a Professional Organizing Business – Start Making Money!

In a busy world, people need to stay organized to have time to do all there is to do. Professional organizers have expertise that can help to streamline people’s lives. Organizing has also risen in demand because people want their spaces to look nice, as well as be utilitarian, and they are willing to pay for a professional’s help. 

By starting a professional organizing business, you can capitalize on that demand and make a healthy profit. Now that you have all the knowledge that you need, you’re ready to start organizing your entrepreneurial plan and launch a successful business! 

• Professional Organizing Business FAQs

Absolutely!  The average organizing job costs $500, so even if you just have 3 clients a week, you can make a healthy profit. Your ongoing expenses are very low, so most of what you make will stay in your pocket.

Training is not required, but it can certainly add to your credibility, particularly if you are trained by a professional association. You can take classes through the National Association of Productivity & Organizing Professionals (NAPO) . 

The duties of a professional organizer include assessing clients’ organizing needs, developing personalized organizing plans, decluttering and purging belongings, creating efficient storage systems, providing guidance and support, teaching organizing skills, and collaborating with clients to maximize space utilization.

Professional organizers can acquire clients through networking with related professionals, building an online presence, offering workshops or webinars, seeking referrals from satisfied clients, collaborating with local businesses, and utilizing targeted advertising or direct mail campaigns.

A professional organizing business can help organize various spaces, including residential spaces such as homes, apartments, closets, garages, basements, attics, and storage areas, as well as office spaces like home offices, corporate offices, and workspaces.

Professional organizing makes a great side hustle. Starting small and gradually expanding your client base can help manage workload and accommodate your other responsibilities. 

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• Decide if the Business Is Right for You
• Hone Your Idea
• Brainstorm a Professional Organizing Business Name
• Create a Professional Organizing Business Plan
• Register Your Business
• Register for Taxes
• Fund your Business
• Apply for Licenses and Permits
• Open a Business Bank Account
• Get Business Insurance
• Prepare to Launch
• Build Your Team
• Run a Professional Organizing Business - Start Making Money!

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How To Write a Business Plan

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Starting a business is a wild ride, and a solid business plan can be the key to keeping you on track. A business plan is essentially a roadmap for your business — outlining your goals, strategies, market analysis and financial projections. Not only will it guide your decision-making, a business plan can help you secure funding with a loan or from investors .

Writing a business plan can seem like a huge task, but taking it one step at a time can break the plan down into manageable milestones. Here is our step-by-step guide on how to write a business plan.

Table of contents

• Write your executive summary
• Do your market research homework
• Set your business goals and objectives
• Plan your business strategy
• Describe your product or service
• Crunch the numbers
• Finalize your business plan

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Step 1: Write your executive summary

Though this will be the first page of your business plan , we recommend you actually write the executive summary last. That’s because an executive summary highlights what’s to come in the business plan but in a more condensed fashion.

An executive summary gives stakeholders who are reading your business plan the key points quickly without having to comb through pages and pages. Be sure to cover each successive point in a concise manner, and include as much data as necessary to support your claims.

You’ll cover other things too, but answer these basic questions in your executive summary:

• Idea: What’s your business concept? What problem does your business solve? What are your business goals?
• Product: What’s your product/service and how is it different?
• Market: Who’s your audience? How will you reach customers?
• Finance: How much will your idea cost? And if you’re seeking funding, how much money do you need? How much do you expect to earn? If you’ve already started, where is your revenue at now?

Step 2: Do your market research homework

The next step in writing a business plan is to conduct market research . This involves gathering information about your target market (or customer persona), your competition, and the industry as a whole. You can use a variety of research methods such as surveys, focus groups, and online research to gather this information. Your method may be formal or more casual, just make sure that you’re getting good data back.

This research will help you to understand the needs of your target market and the potential demand for your product or service—essential aspects of starting and growing a successful business.

Step 3: Set your business goals and objectives

Once you’ve completed your market research, you can begin to define your business goals and objectives. What is the problem you want to solve? What’s your vision for the future? Where do you want to be in a year from now?

Use this step to decide what you want to achieve with your business, both in the short and long term. Try to set SMART goals—specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound benchmarks—that will help you to stay focused and motivated as you build your business.

Step 4: Plan your business strategy

Your business strategy is how you plan to reach your goals and objectives. This includes details on positioning your product or service, marketing and sales strategies, operational plans, and the organizational structure of your small business.

Make sure to include key roles and responsibilities for each team member if you’re in a business entity with multiple people.

Step 5: Describe your product or service

In this section, get into the nitty-gritty of your product or service. Go into depth regarding the features, benefits, target market, and any patents or proprietary tech you have. Make sure to paint a clear picture of what sets your product apart from the competition—and don’t forget to highlight any customer benefits.

Step 6: Crunch the numbers

Financial analysis is an essential part of your business plan. If you’re already in business that includes your profit and loss statement , cash flow statement and balance sheet .

These financial projections will give investors and lenders an understanding of the financial health of your business and the potential return on investment.

You may want to work with a financial professional to ensure your financial projections are realistic and accurate.

Step 7: Finalize your business plan

Once you’ve completed everything, it's time to finalize your business plan. This involves reviewing and editing your plan to ensure that it is clear, concise, and easy to understand.

You should also have someone else review your plan to get a fresh perspective and identify any areas that may need improvement. You could even work with a free SCORE mentor on your business plan or use a SCORE business plan template for more detailed guidance.

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The takeaway

Writing a business plan is an essential process for any forward-thinking entrepreneur or business owner. A business plan requires a lot of up-front research, planning, and attention to detail, but it’s worthwhile. Creating a comprehensive business plan can help you achieve your business goals and secure the funding you need.

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• 5 Best Business Plan Software and Tools in 2023 for Your Small Business
• How to Get a Business License: What You Need to Know
• What Is a Cash Flow Statement?

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How to Write a Business Plan: Beginner’s Guide (& Templates)

Written by: Chloe West

Thinking about starting a business? One of the first steps you’ll need to take is to write a business plan. A business plan can help guide you through your financial planning, marketing strategy, unique selling point and more.

Making sure you start your new business off on the right foot is key, and we’re here to help. We’ve put together this guide to help you write your first business plan. Or, you can skip the guide and dive right into a business plan template .

Ready to get started?

Here’s a short selection of 8 easy-to-edit business plan templates you can edit, share and download with Visme. View more templates below:

8-Step Process for Writing a Business Plan

What is a business plan, why is a business plan important, step #1: write your executive summary, step #2: put together your company description, step #3: conduct your market analysis, step #4: research your competition, step #5: outline your products or services, step #6: summarize your financial plan, step #7: determine your marketing strategy, step #8: showcase your organizational chart, 14 business plan templates to help you get started.

A business plan is a document that helps potential new business owners flesh out their business idea and put together a bird’s eye view of their business. Writing a business plan is an essential step in any startup’s ideation process.

Business plans help determine demographics, market analysis, competitive analysis, financial projections, new products or services, and so much more.

Each of these bits of information are important to have on hand when you’re trying to start a business or pitching investors for funds.

Here’s an example of a business plan that you can customize to incorporate your own business information.

We’re going to walk you through some of the most important parts of your business plan as well as how to write your own business plan in 8 easy steps.

If you’re in the beginning stages of starting a business , you might be wondering if it’s really worth your time to write out your business plan. 

We’re here to tell you that it is.

A business plan is important for a number of reasons, but mostly because it helps to set you up for success right from the start.

Here are four reasons to prove to you why you need to start your business off on the right foot with a plan.

Reason #1: Set Realistic Goals and Milestones

Putting together a business plan helps you to set your objectives for growth and make realistic goals while you begin your business. 

By laying out each of the steps you need to take in order to build a successful business, you’re able to be more reasonable about what your timeline is for achieving everything as well as what your financial projections are.

The best way to set goals is using the SMART goals guidelines, outlined below.

Reason #2: Grow Your Business Faster

Having a business plan helps you be more organized and strategic, improving the overall performance of your business as you start out. In fact, one study found that businesses with a plan grow 30% faster than businesses that don’t.

Doesn’t that sound reason enough alone to start out your business venture with a solidified plan? We thought so too, but we’ve still got two more reasons.

Reason #3: Minimize Risk

Starting a new business is uncharted territory. However, when you start with a roadmap for your journey, it makes it easier to see success and minimize the risks that come with startups.

Minimize risk and maximize profitability by documenting the most important parts of your business planning.

Reason #4: Secure Funding

And finally, our last reason that business plans are so important is that if you plan to pitch investors for funding for your new venture, they’re almost always going to want to see a detailed business plan before deciding whether or not to invest.

You can easily create your business plan and investor pitch deck right here with Visme. Just sign up for a free account below to get started. 

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The executive summary is a brief overview of your entire business plan, giving anyone who reads through your document a quick understanding of what they’re going to learn about your business idea.

However, you need to remember that some of the people who are going to read your business plan don’t want to or have time to read the entire thing. So your executive summary needs to incorporate all of the most important aspects of your plan.

Here’s an example of an executive summary from a business plan template you can customize and turn into your own.

Your executive summary should include:

• Key objective(s)
• Market research
• Competitor information
• Products/services
• Value proposition
• Overview of your financial plan
• How you’re going to actually start your business

One thing to note is that you should actually write your executive summary after the rest of your business plan so that you can properly summarize everything you’ve already created.

So at this point, simply leave a page blank for your executive summary so you can come back to it at the end of your business plan.

The next step is to write out a full description of your business and its core offerings. This section of your business plan should include your mission statement and objectives, along with your company history or overview.

In this section, you may also briefly describe your business formation details from a legal perspective.

Mission Statement

Don’t spend too much time trying to craft this. Your mission statement is a simple “why” you started this business. What are you trying to achieve? Or what does your business solve?

This can be anything from one single quote or a paragraph, but it doesn’t need to be much longer than that. In fact, this could be very similar to your value proposition.

What are your goals? What do you plan to achieve in the first 90 days or one year of your business? What kind of impact do you hope to make on the market?

These are all good points to include in your objectives section so anyone reading your business plan knows upfront what you hope to achieve.

History or Overview

If you’re not launching a brand new business or if you’ve previously worked on another iteration of this business, let potential investors know the history of your company.

If not, simply provide an overview of your business, sharing what it does or what it will do.

Your third step is to conduct a market analysis so you know how your business will fit into its target market. This page in your business plan is simply meant to summarize your findings. Most of your time should be spent actually doing the research.

Your market analysis needs to look at things like:

• Market size, and if it’s grown in recent years or shrinking
• The segment of the market you plan to target
• Demographics and behavior of your target audience
• The demand for your product or service
• Your competitive advantage or differentiation strategy
• The average price of your product or service

Put together a summary of your market analysis and industry research in a 1-2 page format, like we see below.

Your next step is to conduct a competitive analysis. While you likely touched on this briefly during your market analysis, now is the time to do a deep dive so that you have a good grasp on what your competitors are doing and how they are generating customers.

Start by creating a profile of all your existing competitors, or at the very least, your closest competitors – the ones who are offering very similar products or services to you, or are in a similar vicinity (if you’re opening a brick and mortar store).

Focus on their strengths and what they’re doing really well so that you can emulate their best qualities in your own way. Then, look at their weaknesses and what your business can do better.

Take note of their current marketing strategy, including the outlets you see a presence, whether it’s on social media, you hear a radio ad, you see a TV ad, etc. You won’t always find all of their marketing channels, but see what you can find online and on their website.

After this, take a minute to identify potential competitors based on markets you might try out in the future, products or services you plan to add to your offerings, and more.

Then put together a page or two in your business plan that highlights your competitive advantage and how you’ll be successful breaking into the market.

Step five is to dedicate a page to the products or services that your business plans to offer.

Put together a quick list and explanation of what each of the initial product or service offerings will be, but steer clear of industry jargon or buzzwords. This should be written in plain language so anyone reading has a full understanding of what your business will do.

You can have a simple list like we see in the sample page above, or you can dive a little deeper. Depending on your type of business, it might be a good idea to provide additional information about what each product or service entails.

The next step is to work on the financial data of your new business. What will your overhead be? How will your business make money? What are your estimated expenses and profits over the first few months to a year? The expenses should cover all the spending whether they are recurring costs or just one-time LLC filing fees .

There is so much that goes into your financial plan for a new business, so this is going to take some time to compile. Especially because this section of your business plan helps potential cofounders or investors understand if the idea is even viable.

Your financial plan should include at least five major sections:

• Sales Forecast: The first thing you want to include is a forecast or financial projection of how much you think your business can sell over the next year or so. Break this down into the different products, services or facets of your business.
• Balance Sheet: This section is essentially a statement of your company’s financial position. It includes existing assets, liabilities and equity to demonstrate the company’s overall financial health.
• Income Statement: Also known as a profit and loss statement (P&L), this covers your projected expenses and revenue, showcasing whether your business will be profitable or not.
• Operating Budget: A detailed outline of your business’s income and expenses. This should showcase that your business is bringing in more than it’s spending.
• Cash Flow Statements: This tracks how much cash your business has at any given point, regardless of whether customers or clients have paid their bills or have 30-60+ days to do so.

While these are the most common financial statements, you may discover that there are other sections that you want to include or that lenders may want to see from you.

You can automate the process of looking through your documents with an OCR API , which will collect the data from all your financial statements and invoices.

The next step is coming up with a successful marketing plan so that you can actually get the word out about your business. 

Throughout your business plan, you’ve already researched your competitors and your target market, both of which are major components of a good marketing strategy. You need to know who you’re marketing to, and you want to do it better than your competition.

On this page or throughout this section of your business plan, you need to focus on your chosen marketing channels and the types of marketing content you plan to create.

Start by taking a look at the channels that your competitors are on and make sure you have a good understanding of the demographics of each channel as well. You don’t want to waste time on a marketing channel that your target audience doesn’t use.

Then, create a list of each of your planned marketing avenues. It might look something like:

• Social media ( Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest)
• Email newsletter
• Digital ads

Depending on the type of business you’re starting, this list could change quite a bit — and that’s okay. There is no one-size-fits-all marketing strategy, and you need to find the one that brings in the highest number of potential customers.

Your last section will be all about your leadership and management team members. Showcasing that you have a solid team right from the start can make potential investors feel better about funding your venture.

You can easily put together an organizational chart like the one below, with the founder/CEO at the top and each of your team leaders underneath alongside the department they’re in charge of.

Simply add an organizational chart like this as a page into your overall business plan and make sure it matches the rest of your design to create a cohesive document.

If you want to create a good business plan that sets your new business up for success and attracts new investors, it’s a good idea to start with a template. 

We’ve got 14 options below from a variety of different industries for you to choose from. You can customize every aspect of each template to fit your business branding and design preferences.

Template #1: Photography Business Plan Template

This feminine and minimalistic business plan template is perfect for getting started with any kind of creative business. Utilize this template to help outline the step-by-step process of getting your new business idea up and running.

Template #2: Real Estate Business Plan Template

Looking for a more modern business plan design? This template is perfect for plainly laying out each of your business plans in an easy-to-understand format. Adjust the red accents with your business’s colors to personalize this template.

Template #3: Nonprofit Business Plan Template

Creating a business and marketing plan for your nonprofit is still an essential step when you’re just starting out. You need to get the word out to increase donations and awareness for your cause.

Template #4: Restaurant Business Plan Template

If your business plan needs to rely heavily on showcasing photos of your products (like food), this template is perfect for you. Get potential investors salivating at the sight of your business plan, and they’re sure to provide the capital you need.

Template #5: Fashion Business Plan Template

Serifs are in. Utilize this template with stunning serif as all the headers to create a contemporary and trendy business plan design that fits your business. Adjust the colors to match your brand and easily input your own content.

Template #6: Daycare Business Plan Template

Creating a more kid-friendly or playful business? This business plan template has bold colors and design elements that will perfectly represent your business and its mission. 

Use the pages you need, and remove any that you don’t. You can also duplicate pages and move the elements around to add even more content to your business plan.

Template #7: Consulting Business Plan Template

This classic business plan template is perfect for a consulting business that wants to use a stunning visual design to talk about its services.

Template #8: Coffee Shop Business Plan Template

Customize this coffee shop business plan template to match your own business idea. Adjust the colors to fit your brand or industry, replace photos with your own photography or stock photos that represent your business, and insert your own logo, fonts and colors throughout.

Template #9: SaaS Business Plan Template

A SaaS or service-based company also needs a solid business plan that lays out its financials, list of services, target market and more. This template is the perfect starting point.

Template #10: Small Business Plan Template

Every startup or small business needs to start out with a strong business plan in order to start off on the right foot and set yourself up for success. This template is an excellent starting point for any small business.

Template #11: Ecommerce Business Plan Template

An ecommerce business plan is ideal for planning out your pricing strategy of all of your online products, as well as the site you plan to use for setting up your store, whether WordPress, Shopify, Wix or something else.

Template #12: Startup Business Plan Template

Customize this template and make it your own! Edit and Download  

This is another generic business plan template for any type of startup to customize. Switch out the content, fonts and colors to match your startup branding and increase brand equity.

Template #13: One-Page Business Plan Template

Want just a quick business plan to get your idea going before you bite the bullet and map out your entire plan? This one-page template is perfect for those just starting to flesh out a new business idea.

Template #14: Salon Business Plan Template

This salon business plan template is easy on the design and utilizes a light color scheme to put more focus on the actual content. You can use the design as is or keep it as a basis for your own design elements.

Create Your Own Business Plan Today

Ready to write your business plan? Once you’ve created all of the most important sections, get started with a business plan template to really wow your investors and organize your startup plan.

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About the Author

Chloe West is the content marketing manager at Visme. Her experience in digital marketing includes everything from social media, blogging, email marketing to graphic design, strategy creation and implementation, and more. During her spare time, she enjoys exploring her home city of Charleston with her son.

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How To Write a Business Plan in 9 Steps (2024)

Business plans aren’t just for entrepreneurs who need to secure funding—they can help you plan and evaluate new ideas or growth plans, too. Find out how to write a business plan and get the most out of the process in this comprehensive guide.

A great business plan can help you clarify your strategy, identify potential roadblocks, determine necessary resources, and evaluate the viability of your idea and growth plan before you start a business .

Not every successful business launches with a formal business plan, but many founders find value in taking time to step back, research their idea and the market they’re looking to enter, and understand the scope and the strategy behind their tactics. That’s where writing a business plan comes in.

Learn how to write a business plan with a step-by-step guide, get tips for getting the most of your plan, and see real business plan examples to inspire you.

What is a business plan?

A business plan is a strategic document that outlines a company's goals, strategies for achieving them, and the time frame for their achievement. It covers aspects like market analysis , financial projections, and organizational structure, serving as a roadmap for business growth and a tool to secure funding.

Often, financial institutions and investors need to see a business plan before funding any project. Even if you don’t plan to seek outside funding, a well-crafted plan becomes the guidance for your business as it scales.

How to write a business plan in 9 steps

• Draft an executive summary.
• Write a company description.
• Perform a market analysis.
• Outline the management and organization.
• List your products and services.
• Perform customer segmentation.
• Define a marketing plan.
• Provide a logistics and operations plan.
• Make a financial plan.

Few things are more intimidating than a blank page. Starting your business plan with a structured outline and key elements for what you’ll include in each section is the best first step you can take.

Since an outline is such an important step in the process of writing a business plan, we’ve put together a high-level overview to get you started (and avoid the terror of facing a blank page).

Once you have your business plan template in place, it’s time to fill it in. We’ve broken it down by section to help you build your plan step by step.

1. Draft an executive summary.

A good executive summary is one of the most crucial sections of your plan—it’s also the last section you should write.

The executive summary distills everything that follows and gives time-crunched reviewers (e.g., potential investors and lenders) a high-level overview of your business that persuades them to read further.

Again, it’s a summary, so highlight the key points you’ve uncovered while writing your plan. If you’re writing for your own planning purposes, you can skip the summary altogether—although you might want to give it a try anyway, just for practice.

An executive summary shouldn’t exceed one page. Admittedly, that space constraint can make squeezing in all of the salient information a bit stressful—but it’s not impossible. Your business plan’s executive summary should include:

• Business concept. What does your business do?
• Business goals and vision. What does your business want to do?
• Product description and differentiation. What do you sell, and why is it different?
• Target market. Who do you sell to?
• Marketing strategy. How do you plan on reaching your customers?
• Current financial state. What do you currently earn in revenue?
• Projected financial state. What do you foresee earning in revenue?
• The ask. How much money are you asking for?
• The team. Who’s involved in the business?

2. Write a company description.

This section of your business plan should answer two fundamental questions: who are you, and what do you plan to do? 

Answering these questions with a company description provides an introduction to why you’re in business, why you’re different, what you have going for you, and why you’re a good investment. 

For example, clean makeup brand Saie shares a letter from its founder on the company’s mission and why it exists.

Clarifying these details is still a useful exercise, even if you’re the only person who’s going to see them. It’s an opportunity to put to paper some of the more intangible facets of your business, like your principles, ideals, and cultural philosophies.

Here are some of the components you should include in your company description:

• Your business structure (Are you a sole proprietorship, general partnership, limited partnership, or incorporated company?)
• Your business model
• Your industry
• Your business’s vision, mission, and value proposition
• Background information on your business or its history
• Business objectives, both short and long term
• Your team, including key personnel and their salaries

Brand values and goals

To define your brand values , think about all the people your company is accountable to, including owners, employees, suppliers, customers, and investors. Now consider how you’d like to conduct business with each of them. As you make a list, your core values should start to emerge.

Your company description should also include both short- and long-term goals. Short-term goals, generally, should be achievable within the next year, while one to five years is a good window for long-term goals. Make sure your goal setting includes SMART goals : specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound.

Vision and mission statements

Once you know your values, you can write a mission statement . Your statement should explain, in a convincing manner, why your business exists, and should be no longer than a single sentence.

Next, craft your vision statement : What impact do you envision your business having on the world once you’ve achieved your vision? Phrase this impact as an assertion—begin the statement with “We will” and you’ll be off to a great start. Your vision statement, unlike your mission statement, can be longer than a single sentence, but try to keep it to three at most. The best vision statements are concise.

3. Perform a market analysis.

No matter what type of business you start, it’s no exaggeration to say your market can make or break it. Choose the right market for your products—one with plenty of customers who understand and need your product—and you’ll have a head start on success. If you choose the wrong market, or the right market at the wrong time, you may find yourself struggling for each sale.

Market analysis is a key section of your business plan, whether or not you ever intend for anyone else to read it.

This is why market research and analysis is a key section of your business plan, whether or not you ever intend for anyone else to read it. It should include an overview of how big you estimate the market is for your products, an analysis of your business’s position in the market, and an overview of the competitive landscape. Thorough research supporting your conclusions is important both to persuade investors and to validate your own assumptions as you work through your plan.

Here is an example to illustrate how to approach this section:

How big is your potential market?

The potential market is an estimate of how many people need your product. While it’s exciting to imagine sky-high sales figures, you’ll want to use as much relevant independent data as possible to validate your estimated potential market.

Since this can be a daunting process, here are some general tips to help you begin your research:

• Understand your ideal customer profile. Look for government data about the size of your target market , learn where they live, what social channels they use, and their shopping habits.
• Research relevant industry trends and trajectory. Explore consumer trends and product trends in your industry by looking at Google Trends, trade publications, and influencers in the space.
• Make informed guesses. You’ll never have perfect, complete information about your total addressable market. Your goal is to base your estimates on as many verifiable data points as necessary.

Some sources to consult for market data include government statistics offices, industry associations, academic research, and respected news outlets covering your industry.

Read more: What is a Marketing Analysis? 3 Steps Every Business Should Follow

SWOT analysis

A SWOT analysis looks at your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. What are the best things about your company? What are you not so good at? What market or industry shifts can you take advantage of and turn into opportunities? Are there external factors threatening your ability to succeed?

SWOT is often depicted in a grid or visual way. With this visual presentation, your reader can quickly see the factors that may impact your business and determine your competitive advantage in the market.

Competitive analysis

There are three overarching factors you can use to differentiate your business in the face of competition:

• Cost leadership. You have the capacity to maximize profits by offering lower prices than the majority of your competitors. Examples include companies like Mejuri and Endy .
• Differentiation. Your product or service offers something distinct from the current cost leaders in your industry and banks on standing out based on your uniqueness. Think of companies like Knix and QALO .
• Segmentation. You focus on a very specific, or niche, target market, and aim to build traction with a smaller audience before moving on to a broader market. Companies like TomboyX and Heyday Footwear are great examples of this strategy.

To understand which is the best fit, you’ll need to understand your business as well as the competitive landscape.

You’ll always have competition in the market, even with an innovative product, so it’s important to include a competitive overview in your business plan. If you’re entering an established market, include a list of a few companies you consider direct competitors and explain how you plan to differentiate your products and business from theirs.

For example, if you’re selling jewelry , your competitive differentiation could be that, unlike many high-end competitors, you donate a percentage of your profits to a notable charity or pass savings on to your customers.

If you’re entering a market where you can’t easily identify direct competitors, consider your indirect competitors—companies offering products that are substitutes for yours. For example, if you’re selling an innovative new piece of kitchen equipment, it’s too easy to say that because your product is new, you have no competition. Consider what your potential customers are doing to solve the same problems.

4. Outline the management and organization.

If you have a management team, use an organizational chart to show your company’s internal structure, including the roles, responsibilities, and relationships between people in your chart. Communicate how each person will contribute to the success of your startup.

5. List your products and services.

Your products or services will feature prominently in most areas of your business plan, but it’s important to provide a section that outlines key details about them for interested readers.

If you sell many items, you can include more general information on each of your product lines. If you only sell a few, provide additional information on each. For example, bag shop BAGGU sells a large selection of different types of bags, in addition to home goods and other accessories. Its business plan would list out those categories and key details about the products within each.

Describe new products you’ll launch in the near future and any intellectual property you own. Express how they’ll improve profitability. It’s also important to note where products are coming from—handmade crafts are sourced differently than trending products for a dropshipping business, for instance.

6. Perform customer segmentation.

To give a holistic overview of your ideal customer, describe a number of general and specific demographic characteristics. Customer segmentation often includes:

• Where they live.
• Their age range.
• Their level of education.
• Some common behavior patterns.
• How they spend their free time.
• Where they work.
• What technology they use.
• How much they earn.
• Where they’re commonly employed.
• Their values, beliefs, or opinions.

This information will vary based on what you’re selling, but you should be specific enough that it’s unquestionably clear who you’re trying to reach—and more importantly, why you’ve made the choices you have based on who your customers are and what they value.

For example, a college student has different interests, shopping habits, and pricing sensitivity than a 50-year-old executive at a Fortune 500 company. Your business plan and decisions would look very different based on which one was your ideal customer.

Put your customer data to work with Shopify’s customer segmentation

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7. Define a marketing plan.

If you’re planning to invest heavily in Instagram marketing or TikTok ads , for example, it might make sense to include whether Instagram and TikTok are a leading platform for your audience—if it’s not, that might be a sign to rethink your marketing plan.

Market your business with Shopify’s customer marketing tools

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Most marketing plans include information on four key subjects. How much detail you present on each will depend on both your business and your plan’s audience.

• Price:  How much do your products cost, and why have you made that decision?
• Product:  What are you selling and how do you differentiate it in the market?
• Promotion:  How will you get your products in front of your ideal customer?
• Place:  Where will you sell your products? On what channels and in which markets?

Promotion may be the bulk of your plan since you can more readily dive into tactical details, but the other three areas should be covered at least briefly—each is an important strategic lever in your marketing mix.

Here is an example of a marketing plan for a new business:

8. Provide a logistics and operations plan.

Logistics and operations are the workflows you’ll implement to make your business idea a reality. If you’re writing a business plan for your own planning purposes, this is still an important section to consider, even though you might not need to include the same level of detail as if you were seeking investment.

Cover all parts of your planned operations, including:

• Suppliers . Where do you get the raw materials you need for production, or where are your products produced?
• Production . Will you make, manufacture, wholesale , or dropship your products? How long does it take to produce your products and get them shipped to you? How will you handle a busy season or an unexpected spike in demand?
• Facilities . Where will you and any team members work? Do you plan to have a physical retail space? If yes, where?
• Equipment . What tools and technology do you require to be up and running? This includes everything from computers to lightbulbs and everything in between.
• Shipping and fulfillment. Will you be handling all the fulfillment tasks in-house, or will you use a third-party fulfillment partner?
• Inventory . How much will you keep on hand, and where will it be stored? How will you ship it to partners if required, and how will you approach inventory management ?

This section should signal to your reader that you’ve got a solid understanding of your supply chain and strong contingency plans in place to cover potential uncertainty. If your reader is you, it should give you a basis to make other important decisions, like how to price your products to cover your estimated costs, and at what point you plan to break even on your initial spending.

9. Make a financial plan.

The level of detail required in your financial plan will depend on your audience and goals, but typically you’ll want to include three major views of your financials: an income statement, a balance sheet, and a cash-flow statement. It also may be appropriate to include financial data and projections.

Here’s a spreadsheet template that includes everything you’ll need to create an income statement, balance sheet, and cash-flow statement, including some sample numbers. You can edit it to reflect projections if needed.

Let’s review the types of financial statements you’ll need.

Income statements

Your income statement is designed to give readers a look at your revenue sources and expenses over a given time period. With those two pieces of information, they can see the all-important bottom line or the profit or loss your business experienced during that time. If you haven’t launched your business yet, you can project future milestones of the same information.

Balance sheets

Your balance sheet offers a look at how much equity you have in your business. On one side, you list all your business assets (what you own), and on the other side, all your liabilities (what you owe). This provides a snapshot of your business’s shareholder equity, which is calculated as:

Assets - Liabilities = Equity

Cash flow statements

Your cash flow statement is similar to your income statement, with one important difference: it takes into account when revenues are collected and when expenses are paid.

When the cash you have coming in is greater than the cash you have going out, your cash flow is positive. When the opposite scenario is true, your cash flow is negative. Ideally, your cash flow statement will help you see when cash is low, when you might have a surplus, and where you might need to have a contingency plan to access funding to keep your business solvent .

It can be especially helpful to forecast your cash-flow statement to identify gaps or negative cash flow and adjust operations as required.

📚 Read more: What Is Cash Flow Management: Template and Examples

Why write a business plan?

Investors rely on business plans to evaluate the feasibility of a business before funding it, which is why business plans are commonly associated with getting a loan. 

Business plans also help owners identify areas of weakness before launching, potentially avoiding costly mistakes down the road. “Laying out a business plan helped us identify the ‘unknowns’ and made it easier to spot the gaps where we’d need help or, at the very least, to skill up ourselves,” says Jordan Barnett, owner of Kapow Meggings .

There are several other compelling reasons to consider writing a business plan, including:

• Strategic planning. Writing out your plan is an invaluable exercise for clarifying your ideas and can help you understand the scope of your business, as well as the amount of time, money, and resources you’ll need to get started.
• Evaluating ideas. If you’ve got multiple ideas in mind, a rough business plan for each can help you focus your time and energy on the ones with the highest chance of success.
• Research. To write a business plan, you’ll need to research your ideal customer and your competitors—information that will help you make more strategic decisions.
• Recruiting. Your business plan is one of the easiest ways to communicate your vision to potential new hires and can help build their confidence in the venture, especially if you’re in the early stages of growth.
• Partnerships. If you plan to collaborate with other brands , having a clear overview of your vision, your audience, and your business strategy will make it much easier for them to identify if your business is a good fit for theirs.
• Competitions. There are many business plan competitions offering prizes such as mentorships, grants, or investment capital. 

If you’re looking for a structured way to lay out your thoughts and ideas, and to share those ideas with people who can have a big impact on your success, a business plan is an excellent starting point.

Business plan types

Business plan types can span from one page to multiple pages with detailed graphs and reports. There’s no one way to create a business plan. The goal is to convey the most important information about your company for readers.

Common business plans we see include, but are not limited to, the following types:

Traditional business plans

These are the most common business plans. Traditional business plans take longer to write and can be dozens of pages long. Venture capitalist firms and lenders ask for this plan. Traditional business plans may not be necessary if you don’t plan to seek outside funding. That’s where the next type comes in.

Lean business plans

A lean business plan is a shorter version of a traditional business plan. It follows the same format, but only includes the most important information. Businesses use lean business plans to onboard new hires or modify existing plans for a specific target market.

Nonprofit business plans

A nonprofit business plan is for any entity that operates for public or social benefit. It covers everything you’ll find in a traditional business plan, plus a section describing the impact the company plans to make. For example, a speaker and headphone brand that aims to help people with hearing disabilities. Donors often request this plan.

📚 Read more: The Road to Success: Business Plan Examples to Inspire Your Own .

7 tips for creating a small business plan

There are a few best practices when it comes to writing a business plan. While your plan will be unique to your business and goals, keep these tips in mind as you write.

1. Know your audience.

When you know who will be reading your plan—even if you’re just writing it for yourself to clarify your ideas—you can tailor the language and level of detail to them. This can also help you make sure you’re including the most relevant information and figure out when to omit sections that aren’t as impactful.

2. Have a clear goal.

When creating a business plan, you’ll need to put in more work and deliver a more thorough plan if your goal is to secure funding for your business versus working through a plan for yourself or even your team.

3. Invest time in research.

Sections of your business plan will primarily be informed by your ideas and vision, but some of the most crucial information you’ll need requires research from independent sources. This is where you can invest time in understanding who you’re selling to, whether there’s demand for your products, and who else is selling similar products or services.

4. Keep it short and to the point.

No matter who you’re writing for, your business plan should be short and readable—generally no longer than 15 to 20 pages. If you do have additional documents you think may be valuable to your audience and your goals, consider adding them as appendices.

5. Keep the tone, style, and voice consistent.

This is best managed by having a single person write the plan or by allowing time for the plan to be properly edited before distributing it.

6. Use a business plan template.

You can also use a free business plan template to provide a skeleton for writing a plan. These often guide you through each section from financial projects to market research to mission statement ensuring you don’t miss a step.

7. Try business plan software.

Writing a business plan isn’t the easiest task for business owners. But it’s important for anyone starting or expanding a business. Fortunately, there are tools to help with everything from planning, drafting, creating graphics, syncing financial data, and more. Business plan software also has business plan templates and tutorials to help you finish a comprehensive plan in hours, rather than days.

A few curated picks include:

• LivePlan : the most affordable option with samples and templates
• Bizplan : tailored for startups seeking investment
• Go Small Biz : budget-friendly option with industry-specific templates

📚 Read more: 6 Best Business Plan Software to Help Write Your Future

Common mistakes when writing a business plan

Other articles on business plans would never tell you what we’re about to tell you: Your business plan can fail. The last thing you want is for time and effort to go down the drain. Avoid these common mistakes:

• Bad business idea. Sometimes your idea may be too risky for potential investors, too expensive to run, or there’s no market. Aim for small business ideas that require low startup costs.
• No exit strategy. If you don’t show an exit strategy, or a plan for investors to leave the business with maximum profits, you’ll have little luck finding capital.
• Unbalanced teams. A great product is the cost of entry to starting a business. But an incredible team will take it to the top. Unfortunately, many business owners overlook a balanced team. They focus on potential profits, without worrying about how it will be done. 
• Missing financial projections. Don’t leave out your balance sheet, cash flow statements, P&L statements, and income statements. Include your break-even analysis and return-on-investment calculations in your financial projections to create a successful business plan.
• Spelling and grammar errors. All the best organizations have an editor review their documents. If someone spots typos while reading your business plan, how can they believe you’ll run a successful company?

Prepare your business plan today

Whether you’re working on starting a new online business idea , building a retail storefront, growing your established business, or purchasing an existing business , you now understand how to write a business plan that suits your business’s goals and needs.

Feature illustration by Rachel Tunstall

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Business plan FAQ

How do i write a business plan.

Learning how to write a business plan is simple if you use a business plan template or business plan software. Typically, a traditional business plan for every new business should have the following components :

• Executive summary
• Company description, including value proposition
• Market analysis and competitive analysis
• Management and organization
• Products and services
• Customer segmentation
• Marketing plan
• Logistics and operations
• Financial plan and financial projections

What is a good business plan?

A good business plan starts with a strong executive summary. It also adequately outlines idea feasibility, target market insights, and the competitive landscape. A business plan template can help businesses be sure to follow the typical format of traditional business plans which include financial projections, details about the management team, and other key elements that venture capital firms and potential investors want to see.

What are the 3 main purposes of a business plan?

The three main purposes of a business plan are: 

• To clarify your plans for growth
• To understand your financial needs
• To attract funding from investors or secure a business loan

What are the different types of business plans?

The types of business plans include startup, refocusing, internal, annual, strategic, feasibility, operations, growth, and scenario-based. Each type of business plan has a different purpose. Business plan formats include traditional, lean, and nonprofit. Find a business plan template for the type of plan you want to write.

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How to Start an Organizing Business in 14 Steps (In-Depth Guide)

Updated:   February 13, 2024

BusinessGuru.co is reader-supported. When you buy through links on my site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more

The home organizing market is booming. After reaching $11.4 billion in 2021 , organizing is estimated to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4% from 2021 to 2025. It’s a good time for newcomers to join the professional organizing business.

With the right business plan and organizational skills, aspiring entrepreneurs can capitalize on this demand and build a successful business. From decluttering homes to streamlining offices, professional organizers help clients take control of their spaces and lives.

This guide will walk you through how to start a organizing business. Topics include market research, registering an EIN, forming a business entity, competitive analysis, marketing, and more. Here’s everything you need to know about starting your own professional organizing business.

1. Conduct Organizing Market Research

To start a professional organizing career you need to know about the professional organizing industry. Market research offers insight into your target market, service trends, local market saturation, and more.

Some details you’ll learn as you sort through research on organizing and storage solutions include:

• The target market for professional organizers is vast and varied.
• The most typical clients are middle-to-upper-income households overwhelmed by clutter and disorganization.
• 80% of US households feel cluttered, indicating massive market potential.
• Key demographics include parents with busy kids, young professionals in small city apartments, seniors downsizing, and small business owners.
• With hectic modern lifestyles, people increasingly value time over organizing themselves.
• Hiring a professional organizer saves clients time and stress.
• As more baby boomers near retirement, demand for downsizing and estate organization will also rise.
• Competitive advantage can come from specialization.
• Some organizers focus on specific client groups like hoarders, seniors, or families with ADHD. Others specialize in spaces like garages, offices, closets, and kitchens.
• Virtual organizing is a new trend that provides added convenience.
• Pricing is an important consideration. The typical hourly rate is $50-150 , with higher prices in major metro areas.
• Packages and memberships that offer ongoing maintenance are also popular. To build a client base, new organizers may consider discounted intro offers.
• Specializing in an underserved niche can also enable higher rates.
• A key driver of growth is increased consumer awareness of the benefits of an organized space and lifestyle.
• Social media posts and home-organizing TV shows have made organizing cool and accessible. As more people use professional organizers, word-of-mouth also builds momentum.

Specialization allows organizers to dominate a niche. Low startup costs and the remote/virtual organizing models also minimize risk for new solo entrepreneurs. For organized, empathetic individuals, now is the prime time to capitalize on demand and launch a profitable organizing business.

2. Analyze the Competition

Thorough competitive analysis is crucial when launching an organizing business. Assess both local brick-and-mortar competitors and larger national brands with an online presence.

Some ways to better analyze other professional organizing businesses include:

• Visit their websites and social media pages to evaluate services, pricing, and branding.
• Note specialties, target client demographics, and any unique offerings.
• Drive by physical office locations if applicable.
• Research national organizing franchises and chains like The Container Store and Neat Method .
• Browse their websites and visit local franchises if possible.
• Evaluate their service menus and fee structures.
• Take note of any services lacking in your area that present an opportunity. Review their brand messaging and marketing content.
• Analyze the online presence and visibility of local and national competitors.
• Search key organizing terms on Google to see whose website, blog posts, and local business listings rank highly.
• Check how many and what kinds of reviews they have on sites like Yelp.
• Visit their Instagram and Facebook pages to assess follower count and engagement.

A detailed understanding of established competitors will inform your organizing business strategy. You can decide about your niche, pricing, services, and marketing with your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.

3. Costs to Start an Organizing Business

Starting an organizing business has relatively low barriers to entry compared to other service industries. With careful planning and budgeting, the initial investments can be minimal. Here is an overview of typical start-up and ongoing costs to factor into your organizing business plan:

Start-Up Costs

• Business Licensing Fees – $50-$500+ depending on your state and local municipality. Most areas require at least a basic business license to operate legally.
• Professional Organizing Certification – $200-$500 for various training programs and certificates like the Board of Certification for Professional Organizers (BCPO) or Certified Professional Organizers (CPO) credentials. While optional, certification bolsters your expertise and credibility.
• Website – $50-300+ to purchase a domain, security certificate, and basic website hosting package. Many website builders like Wix and Squarespace offer free templates to create your site affordably.
• Business Cards – $50-100 for starter packs of 250-500 basic cards to hand out to prospective clients.
• Insurance – $300-1000+ for general liability insurance to protect yourself from any damages, injuries, or lawsuits, especially if working inside client homes. Quotes will vary based on your location and coverage levels.
• Technology – $200-500+ for a laptop, smartphone, cloud storage, productivity software, CRM, and other core tech needs.
• Office Supplies – $100-300 for storage bins, labels, hanging files, shelving, and other inventory to equip your organizing office or vehicle.
• Marketing Materials – $100-300+ for flyers, brochures, business cards, and promotional giveaways for networking and advertising.

Total Minimum Start-Up Costs: $1,000 – $3,000

Ongoing Costs

• Insurance – $50-150 to pay premiums on your liability and any other business insurance.
• Office Rent – $200-1000+ depending on if you lease dedicated office space or work from home. Virtual organizing businesses can skip this cost.
• Utilities – $50-200 for cell phone, internet, electricity, and other services to run your business, especially if leasing an office.
• Accounting Software – $10-50 per month for apps like Quickbooks or Wave to manage billing, expenses, and taxes.
• Website Hosting – $10-20 for hosting fees to keep your site online.
• Marketing – $50-500+ per month for advertising, content creation, SEO, and other promotion of your services.
• Professional Fees – $100-500 for legal, accounting, consulting, or other specialized services.
• Transportation – $100-300 for gas, maintenance, parking, etc. to travel to client locations.
• Supplies – $50-100 to replenish any inventory of organizing products and tools.

Annual Ongoing Expenses

• Taxes and Licenses – $500-2000 to file quarterly/annual taxes and renew your business license and certificates.
• Continuing Education – $100-500 for courses, conferences, and training to maintain your professional organizing credentials.
• Website Maintenance – $100-500 for updates, security, and enhancing your online presence.
• Financial Planning & Accounting – $300-1000 to work with accountants and advisors to manage your finances and cash flow.

These estimates provide an approximate overview of what starting an organizing business entails. Your exact costs will vary based on your location, professional experience, services offered, number of employees, and other factors.

4. Form a Legal Business Entity

When starting an organizing business, one of the first legal steps is choosing your business structure. The four main options each have advantages and disadvantages to consider:

Sole Proprietorship

A sole proprietorship is the simplest structure with no formal business registration needed beyond licenses. You operate as an individual managing all aspects of the business.

• Pros: Easy and inexpensive to set up. No complex paperwork or legal fees. You retain full control and get to keep all profits.
• Cons: You have unlimited personal liability for debts and any legal issues. No options for investment funding. Less credibility with clients than a registered corporation. Difficult to scale if you want to grow and hire employees.

Partnership

A partnership allows two or more owners to establish and manage the business together. You register a partnership agreement outlining financial and managerial details.

• Pros: Easy to establish with minimal legal paperwork. Shared expertise and investment between partners.
• Cons: Partners are jointly liable for all financial and legal obligations. A poorly executed partnership can lead to disputes and gridlock. Turnover in partners can disrupt operations. Difficult to raise outside investments and funding.

Another definition of a partnership is working together with specific companies on a regular basis. For instance, you could partner with pallet businesses , laundromats , restaurants, furniture stores, locksmiths , car shops, bike shops , and more, to organize their inventory.

Limited Liability Company (LLC)

An LLC combines the pass-through taxation of a partnership with the limited liability of a corporation. Owners aren’t personally responsible for debts and legal issues beyond their investment.

• Pros: Liability protection for owners’ assets. Flexible management options. Easy to add new investors or owners. Credibility of formal business registration.
• Cons: More complex paperwork and registration requirements than a sole proprietorship. Must comply with regulations to maintain LLC status. Self-employment taxes still apply.

Corporation

A corporation is a separate legal entity from its owners. Shareholders have limited liability based on their ownership percentage.

• Pros: Complete liability protection for owners. Additional tax deductions. Can raise funds through stock offerings. Continuity even with changes in ownership. High credibility with customers.
• Cons: Most expensive and complex entity to establish with extensive legal paperwork. Double taxation of profits and dividends. Extensive record-keeping and reporting requirements.

5. Register Your Business For Taxes

An Employer Identification Number (EIN) is a unique tax ID number that identifies your business to the IRS and state tax authorities. An EIN is required to legally operate any type of business entity besides a sole proprietorship.

As an LLC or corporation, your organizing business needs its own EIN for important tax and banking purposes. An EIN is necessary to:

• Open a business bank account
• File business tax returns
• Hire employees and process payroll
• Apply for business licenses and permits

Applying for an EIN is free and can be done online via the IRS in just a few minutes:

• Go to IRS EIN Assistant and select Apply Online
• Choose View Additional Types including Limited Liability Companies, and select Continue
• Select Limited Liability Company, enter your LLC information, and submit the online form
• Receive your EIN immediately on submission

It’s that simple! Be sure to keep your EIN private and secure. Once you have your EIN, contact your state revenue agency to register for any tax accounts needed for sales, payroll, or other business taxes in your state.

6. Setup Your Accounting

As an organizing business owner, ensuring your financial records and taxes are in order is crucial. Investing in quality accounting tools and services from the start will save you significant time and headaches down the road.

Accounting Software

Using small business accounting software like QuickBooks is highly recommended. QuickBooks seamlessly syncs with your business bank accounts and credit cards, automatically importing and categorizing transactions to simplify bookkeeping.

It generates invoices, tracks receivables and payables, monitors cash flow, and runs reports for taxes. The automation frees you to focus on clients, not manual paperwork.

Hire an Accountant

Pairing software with an accountant provides maximum financial oversight and expertise. A bookkeeper can handle tasks like monthly reconciliations in Quickbooks to ensure accuracy. Come tax time, your accountant will prepare and file business tax returns, advise on deductions and credits, and navigate any IRS correspondence.

Expect to invest around $200-$500 monthly for a bookkeeper and $1000-$3000 to have your accountant prepare fiscal year-end filings.

Open a Business Bank Account

Keeping personal and business expenses completely separate is also non-negotiable. Register for an Employer ID Number (EIN) and open a dedicated business checking account in your LLC’s name. Never commingle funds or pay personal expenses from the business account.

Apply for a Business Credit Card

Applying for a business credit card in your LLC’s name is also advised. Business cards don’t use your credit score, so you can establish a spending limit and history tied solely to your organizing company. Dedicated business accounts and cards simplify expense tracking and year-end reporting.

7. Obtain Licenses and Permits

Before welcoming your first organizing clients, it’s crucial to ensure your business is properly licensed and permitted at both the state and local levels. Find federal license requirements through the U.S. Small Business Administration . The SBA local search tool offers insight into state requirements.

One of the first steps is to check with your city or county clerk’s office on any general business licenses required locally. Most municipalities require at least a basic business license to legally operate within their jurisdiction. Fees are generally $50-$100 annually.

If you plan to operate your organizing business out of a commercial office space, you’ll likely need a certificate of occupancy (COO) from the local building department. A COO confirms the space is zoned for commercial use and meets code requirements. Expect to pay $200-$500 for the necessary inspections and certificates.

Check your state’s Secretary of State website for any business registrations required at the state level. For example, California requires LLCs to file a Statement of Information. Florida mandates an annual report for LLCs. Stay compliant with any annual state filings.

Most states also require a reseller permit or sales tax license if selling physical products. For organizing businesses focusing solely on services, this may not apply but double check with your state revenue department. Optional specialty licenses like waste transport licenses may also apply depending on your services.

Do you plan to travel to organize clients’ homes? States often regulate service industries like home contractors. In Texas, household organizing requires a Property Tax Consultant license. Louisiana enacted a Home Organizer license category. Check for any similar regulations in your state.

At the local level, some cities require additional business licenses for service providers working inside residences. Verify the rules in the municipalities you plan to serve. You want to avoid expensive compliance violations.

8. Get Business Insurance

Carrying adequate business insurance is highly advised to protect your organizing company against unexpected liabilities. Without coverage, a single incident could destroy everything you’ve built.

Imagine a client slips and falls in your office, resulting in an expensive injury claim. Or while organizing a client’s home, you accidentally damage a prized furniture piece or art object. Your assets could be seized in a lawsuit if you lack insurance.

Other risks like fire, theft, or natural disasters could destroy your office and equipment. Cyber incidents could expose private customer data. Employees may be injured on the job. Insurance covers these disruptions so your business can survive.

Follow this process to get insured:

• Research policy options like general liability, commercial property, professional liability, workers’ compensation, cyber, and business auto. Review costs and coverage explanations on sites like CoverWallet .
• Speak with an insurance broker who can assess your specific risks and make coverage recommendations. Expect to pay $500-$2,000 annually depending on your needs.
• Provide requested information like your employee count, office details, service regions, revenue projections, and client contracts. Insurers will use this data to quote premiums.
• Review multiple quotes in detail and ask brokers to clarify exclusions or limitations. Select a policy that fits your budget while providing robust protection.
• Pay your policy premium to activate coverage. Ensure you understand the requirements for submitting claims if incidents occur.

Don’t wait until it’s too late—get insured from the start. Comprehensive business insurance gives organizing entrepreneurs peace of mind to grow without fear of financial ruin from unforeseen events.

9. Create an Office Space

Having a professional office space can give your organizing business credibility and provide a centralized hub for meeting with clients. The right office setup for your needs depends on your budget, location, and work style.

Home Office

A home office is the most affordable option, with no leasing costs beyond dedicated supplies and furnishings. It offers convenience and flexibility for solo entrepreneurs. However, home offices lack the legitimacy of commercial spaces and can hamper productivity with household distractions. They also provide no space for employees as you scale.

Coworking Office

Coworking spaces like WeWork offer affordable monthly memberships ($200-$500) for shared office environments. You gain amenities like meeting rooms, office equipment, and networking without the cost of solo leased space. Downsides are potential distractions and no long-term stability if you later relocate.

Retail Office

Short-term retail spaces may suit organizing consultants who meet clients on-site. Kiosks in malls or booths at markets let you book affordable space ($25-$100/day) only when needed versus a permanent lease. You gain exposure to customer traffic but spaces are small and lack privacy.

Commercial Office

For established agencies, leasing dedicated commercial office space provides the most professional setup for meeting clients on your turf. Expect monthly rents of $1000-$5000 depending on location, size, and amenities. The fixed overhead is substantial but offers long-term stability and unlimited growth capacity on-site.

10. Source Your Equipment

An organizing business has relatively minimal equipment needs, with most materials able to be sourced affordably. Here are some options for acquiring the necessary supplies:

Core inventory like storage bins, shelves, and hanging files can be purchased new from general retailers like Target , Walmart , and Amazon . Office supply stores also carry essentials like labels, binders, and organization systems. Expect to invest $500-$1000 to stock up on quality gear to use with clients and outfit your office.

Buying Used

Used and vintage storage containers, shelving units, file cabinets and more can be sourced secondhand for cost savings. Scout local thrift stores, garage sales, estate sales, and online markets like Craigslist , Facebook Marketplace , and eBay for unique bins, baskets, and shelves to add character to your office.

Consider renting a storage unit near your office to house surplus inventory between client jobs. A 5×5 unit rents for approximately $50-$150 monthly, providing flexible overflow storage without buying unnecessary supplies. Portable shelving units and storage pods can also be rented on demand for large client projects.

Leasing options are limited for organizing equipment, though new companies like Fernish rent premium furniture and decor to stage organized spaces for clients. There are also office equipment leasing companies for copiers, printers, and technology needs.

11. Establish Your Brand Assets

Developing a strong brand identity is crucial for organizing businesses to stand out and be remembered.

Follow these key steps to create professional brand assets as you launch your company:

Getting a Business Phone Number

A business phone number lends legitimacy versus using a personal cell. Services like RingCentral offer virtual phone numbers with custom greetings, extensions, call routing, and more for $25-$50 monthly. A professional number builds trust when prospects call your organizing business.

Creating a Logo and Brand Assets

A logo encapsulates your brand identity. Consider an organizing logo with clean lines and categories or a fun character like “The Clutter Slayer.” Looka makes custom logo design easy starting at $20.

Use your logo across assets like business cards, invoices, office signage, your website, and social media. Brand consistency boosts recognition so prospects remember you.

Creating Business Cards and Signage

Business cards establish your professionalism in person. Signage marks your organizing office. Vistaprint offers affordable custom cards, door decals, banners, and more starting at $10.

Hand your card to prospects at networking events, client meetings, and when asked what you do. Display signage so passersby can easily find your office.

Purchasing a Domain Name

Secure a domain like YourOrganizingBiz.com using a registrar like Namecheap . Pick a name that’s memorable, short, and describes your services. Buying the .com establishes brand authority online.

Building a Website

Every home-organizing business needs a professional organizing business website. Use DIY builders like Wix to create your site for free. Or hire a contractor on Fiverr for $500.

Your site is a digital brochure for services, credentials, and booking. Ensure a professional design aligned with your brand.

Investing in core brand assets gives startups like organizing businesses an instantly polished identity. This engages prospects and builds company value.

12. Join Associations and Groups

Joining relevant local groups and associations provides invaluable connections when starting an organizing business.

Local Associations

Look for local chapters of larger professional organizing associations like NAPO ( National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals ) or ICD ( Institute for Challenging Disorganization ).

Attending association events puts you in touch with fellow organizers to exchange insights, leads, and advice. Displaying association membership also builds your credibility with clients.

Local Meetups

Sites like Meetup list events for organizers and small business owners in your city. Attend these meetups to connect face-to-face with potential mentors, partners, and clients.

Look for meetups focused on decluttering, productivity, home organization, small business marketing, women entrepreneurs, and related topics. Bring plenty of business cards to distribute.

Facebook Groups

Facebook communities create valuable virtual networking at your fingertips. Search for and join groups like CLEANING BUSINESS OWNERS , Organizers Unleashed: The Art of Professional Organizing , and Organizing Experts to tap into thousands of fellow organizers worldwide.

13. How to Market an Organizing Business

Implementing an effective marketing strategy is essential for organizing businesses to attract clients and expand. Try these key tactics to get the word out:

Referral Marketing

Marketing builds awareness so prospects seek out and hire your services. Satisfied clients also provide invaluable referrals, so prioritize excellence. Offer referral rewards like a $25 gift card or account credit to incentivize shares. Send thank you notes and testimonial requests to happy customers.

Digital Marketing

• Search ads – Run Google/Bing ads targeting and organizing keywords in your area. Pay only when prospects click your ad.
• Social media ads – Facebook and Instagram ads can target local demographics who may need organizing help.
• SEO optimization – Ensure your website has organized keywords to rank highly in search engines.
• Video content – Create a YouTube channel sharing organizing tips and tour client projects.
• Blogging – Write weekly organizing advice posts to build website traffic and expertise.
• Email marketing – Send emails to subscribers with decluttering tips and special offers.
• Social media – Post regularly on your business’s Facebook and Instagram pages. Share before/after photos, client testimonials, etc.

Traditional Marketing

• Direct mail – Send promotional postcards showcasing your services to local households.
• Flyers – Distribute flyers at community centers, libraries, real estate offices, and other high-traffic areas.
• Radio ads – Ads on local radio stations can promote your organizing business.
• Newspaper ads – Local paper ads target older demographics who may need organizing help.
• Billboards – A roadside billboard offers high visibility but can be costly.
• Vehicle wrap – Brand your car or van to essentially make it a moving advertisement.

While digital marketing provides advantages like better targeting and measurement, don’t rule out traditional mediums completely. A mix of digital and traditional tactics combined with an amazing client experience is the recipe for rapid organizing business growth.

14. Focus on the Customer

Providing an incredible customer service experience is crucial for organizing businesses to drive referrals and growth. Some ways to improve your customer focus as a successful professional organizing business include:

• After you’ve helped organize a home or office, ask happy customers to share their positive experiences on review sites like Yelp.
• Send follow-up thank you notes after a job and include a referral code they can pass to friends for 10% off.
• Offer additional value like free maintenance visits every 3-6 months.
• Check-in on your organizing systems and make tweaks.
• Clients will appreciate the continued attention and be more inclined to tell contacts about your amazing service.
• Be transparent about your fees and timeline so clients know what to expect. Thoroughly explain your organizing process and methods during a consultation.
• Avoid pressuring clients to purchase add-ons or extras. Deliver services on time as promised.
• Personal touches also build lasting relationships with customers. Remember and use client names frequently.
• Ask about any upcoming events or milestones in their lives. Send a handwritten congratulations card if a client mentions a new baby or promotion at work.

Providing this level of customer service shows you care about more than just a transaction. Clients are so impressed that they can’t help but share your organizing business with family and friends. Word travels fast, bringing in a stream of new clients from referrals.

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How to Write a Business Plan: Your Step-by-Step Guide

So, you’ve got an idea and you want to start a business —great! Before you do anything else, like seek funding or build out a team, you'll need to know how to write a business plan. This plan will serve as the foundation of your company while also giving investors and future employees a clear idea of your purpose.

Below, Lauren Cobello, Founder and CEO of Leverage with Media PR , gives her best advice on how to make a business plan for your company.

Build your dream business with the help of a high-paying job—browse open jobs on The Muse »

What is a business plan, and when do you need one?

According to Cobello, a business plan is a document that contains the mission of the business and a brief overview of it, as well as the objectives, strategies, and financial plans of the founder. A business plan comes into play very early on in the process of starting a company—more or less before you do anything else.

“You should start a company with a business plan in mind—especially if you plan to get funding for the company,” Cobello says. “You’re going to need it.”

Whether that funding comes from a loan, an investor, or crowdsourcing, a business plan is imperative to secure the capital, says the U.S. Small Business Administration . Anyone who’s considering giving you money is going to want to review your business plan before doing so. That means before you head into any meeting, make sure you have physical copies of your business plan to share.

Different types of business plans

The four main types of business plans are:

Startup Business Plans

Internal business plans, strategic business plans, one-page business plans.

Let's break down each one:

If you're wondering how to write a business plan for a startup, Cobello has advice for you. Startup business plans are the most common type, she says, and they are a critical tool for new business ventures that want funding. A startup is defined as a company that’s in its first stages of operations, founded by an entrepreneur who has a product or service idea.

Most startups begin with very little money, so they need a strong business plan to convince family, friends, banks, and/or venture capitalists to invest in the new company.

Internal business plans “are for internal use only,” says Cobello. This kind of document is not public-facing, only company-facing, and it contains an outline of the company’s business strategy, financial goals and budgets, and performance data.

Internal business plans aren’t used to secure funding, but rather to set goals and get everyone working there tracking towards them.

As the name implies, strategic business plans are geared more towards strategy and they include an assessment of the current business landscape, notes Jérôme Côté, a Business Advisor at BDC Advisory Services .

Unlike a traditional business plan, Cobello adds, strategic plans include a SWOT analysis (which stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) and an in-depth action plan for the next six to 12 months. Strategic plans are action-based and take into account the state of the company and the industry in which it exists.

Although a typical business plan falls between 15 to 30 pages, some companies opt for the much shorter One-Page Business Plan. A one-page business plan is a simplified version of the larger business plan, and it focuses on the problem your product or service is solving, the solution (your product), and your business model (how you’ll make money).

A one-page plan is hyper-direct and easy to read, making it an effective tool for businesses of all sizes, at any stage.

How to create a business plan in 7 steps

Every business plan is different, and the steps you take to complete yours will depend on what type and format you choose. That said, if you need a place to start and appreciate a roadmap, here’s what Cobello recommends:

1. Conduct your research

Before writing your business plan, you’ll want to do a thorough investigation of what’s out there. Who will be the competitors for your product or service? Who is included in the target market? What industry trends are you capitalizing on, or rebuking? You want to figure out where you sit in the market and what your company’s value propositions are. What makes you different—and better?

2. Define your purpose for the business plan

The purpose of your business plan will determine which kind of plan you choose to create. Are you trying to drum up funding, or get the company employees focused on specific goals? (For the former, you’d want a startup business plan, while an internal plan would satisfy the latter.) Also, consider your audience. An investment firm that sees hundreds of potential business plans a day may prefer to see a one-pager upfront and, if they’re interested, a longer plan later.

3. Write your company description

Every business plan needs a company description—aka a summary of the company’s purpose, what they do/offer, and what makes it unique. Company descriptions should be clear and concise, avoiding the use of jargon, Cobello says. Ideally, descriptions should be a few paragraphs at most.

4. Explain and show how the company will make money

A business plan should be centered around the company’s goals, and it should clearly explain how the company will generate revenue. To do this, Cobello recommends using actual numbers and details, as opposed to just projections.

For instance, if the company is already making money, show how much and at what cost (e.g. what was the net profit). If it hasn’t generated revenue yet, outline the plan for how it will—including what the product/service will cost to produce and how much it will cost the consumer.

5. Outline your marketing strategy

How will you promote the business? Through what channels will you be promoting it? How are you going to reach and appeal to your target market? The more specific and thorough you can be with your plans here, the better, Cobello says.

6. Explain how you’ll spend your funding

What will you do with the money you raise? What are the first steps you plan to take? As a founder, you want to instill confidence in your investors and show them that the instant you receive their money, you’ll be taking smart actions that grow the company.

7. Include supporting documents

Creating a business plan is in some ways akin to building a legal case, but for your business. “You want to tell a story, and to be as thorough as possible, while keeping your plan succinct, clear, interesting, and visually appealing,” Cobello says. “Supporting documents could include financial projects, a competitive analysis of the market you’re entering into, and even any licenses, patents, or permits you’ve secured.”

A business plan is an individualized document—it’s ultimately up to you what information to include and what story you tell. But above all, Cobello says, your business plan should have a clear focus and goal in mind, because everything else will build off this cornerstone.

“Many people don’t realize how important business plans are for the health of their company,” she says. “Set aside time to make this a priority for your business, and make sure to keep it updated as you grow.”

Professional Organizing Business Plan Template

Written by Dave Lavinsky

Professional Organizing Business Plan

Over the past 20+ years, we have helped over 500 entrepreneurs and business owners create business plans to start and grow their professional organizing companies.

If you’re unfamiliar with creating a professional organizing business plan, you may think creating one will be a time-consuming and frustrating process. For most entrepreneurs it is, but for you, it won’t be since we’re here to help. We have the experience, resources, and knowledge to help you create a great business plan.

In this article, you will learn some background information on why business planning is important. Then, you will learn how to write a professional organizing business plan step-by-step so you can create your plan today.

Download our Ultimate Business Plan Template here >

What is a Professional Organizing Business Plan?

A business plan provides a snapshot of your professional organizing business as it stands today, and lays out your growth plan for the next five years. It explains your business goals and your strategies for reaching them. It also includes market research to support your plans.

Why You Need a Business Plan for a Professional Organizer

If you’re looking to start a professional organizing business or grow your existing professional organizing company, you need a business plan. A business plan will help you raise funding, if needed, and plan out the growth of your professional organizing business to improve your chances of success. Your professional organizing business plan is a living document that should be updated annually as your company grows and changes.

Sources of Funding for Professional Organizing Businesses

With regard to funding, the main sources of funding for a professional organizing business are personal savings, credit cards, bank loans, and angel investors. When it comes to bank loans, banks will want to review your business plan and gain confidence that you will be able to repay your loan and interest. To acquire this confidence, the loan officer will not only want to ensure that your financials are reasonable, but they will also want to see a professional plan. Such a plan will give them the confidence that you can successfully and professionally operate a business. Personal savings and bank loans are the most common funding paths for professional organizing companies.

Finish Your Business Plan Today!

How to write a business plan for a professional organizing business.

If you want to start a professional organizing business or expand your current one, you need a business plan. The guide below details the necessary information for how to write each essential component of your professional organizing business plan.

Executive Summary

Your executive summary provides an introduction to your business plan, but it is normally the last section you write because it provides a summary of each key section of your plan.

The goal of your executive summary is to quickly engage the reader. Explain to them the kind of professional organizing business you are running and the status. For example, are you a startup, do you have a professional organizing business that you would like to grow, or are you operating a chain of professional organizing businesses?

Next, provide an overview of each of the subsequent sections of your plan.

• Give a brief overview of the professional organizing industry.
• Discuss the type of professional organizing business you are operating.
• Detail your direct competitors. Give an overview of your target customers.
• Provide a snapshot of your marketing strategy. Identify the key members of your team.
• Offer an overview of your financial plan.

Company Overview

In your company overview, you will detail the type of professional organizing business you are operating.

For example, you might specialize in one of the following types of professional organizing businesses:

• Home Organizing Services: These businesses focus on helping individuals declutter and organize their homes. Professional organizers work with clients to streamline belongings, create efficient storage systems, and implement organization solutions that fit the client’s lifestyle.
• Office and Workspace Organizing Services: This type of organizing business specializes in creating efficient office spaces and work environments. Professional organizers assist individuals in arranging office supplies, managing paperwork, and creating functional layouts to enhance productivity.
• Digital and Virtual Organizing Services: With the increase in digital clutter, virtual organizing businesses help clients organize their digital files, emails, and online documents. They provide guidance remotely and offer digital tools to help clients regain control over their digital spaces.
• Relocation and Moving Services: Organizers assist individuals and families with the process of moving homes. They help clients plan and execute a smooth relocation by coordinating packing, labeling, and organizing belongings, ensuring a seamless transition to the new living space.

In addition to explaining the type of professional organizing business you will operate, the company overview needs to provide background on the business.

Include answers to questions such as:

• When and why did you start the business?
• What milestones have you achieved to date? Milestones could include the number of clients served, the value of contracts signed, reaching X amount of revenue yearly, etc.
• Your legal business structure. Are you incorporated as an S-Corp? An LLC? A sole proprietorship? Explain your legal structure here.

Industry Analysis

In your industry or market analysis, you need to provide an overview of the professional organizing industry.  While this may seem unnecessary, it serves multiple purposes.

First, researching the professional organizing industry educates you. It helps you understand the market in which you are operating.  Secondly, market research can improve your marketing strategy, particularly if your analysis identifies market trends. The third reason is to prove to readers that you are an expert in your industry. By conducting the research and presenting it in your plan, you achieve just that.

The following questions should be answered in the industry analysis section of your professional organizing business plan:

• How big is the professional organizing industry (in dollars)?
• Is the market declining or increasing?
• Who are the key competitors in the market?
• Who are the key suppliers in the market?
• What trends are affecting the industry?
• What is the industry’s growth forecast over the next 5 – 10 years?
• What is the relevant market size? That is, how big is the potential target market for your professional organizing business? You can extrapolate such a figure by assessing the size of the market in the entire country and then applying that figure to your local population.

Customer Analysis

The customer analysis section of your professional organizing business plan must detail the customers you serve and/or expect to serve.

The following are examples of customer segments: individuals, families, home office businesses and all sizes of corporations.

As you can imagine, the customer segment(s) you choose will have a great impact on the type of professional organizing business you operate. Clearly, individuals would respond to different marketing promotions than corporations, for example.

Try to break out your target customers in terms of their demographic and psychographic profiles. With regards to demographics, including a discussion of the ages, genders, locations, and income levels of the potential customers you seek to serve.

Psychographic profiles explain the wants and needs of your target customers. The more you can recognize and define these needs, the better you will do in attracting and retaining your customers.

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Competitive Analysis

Your competitive analysis should identify the indirect and direct competitors your business faces and then focus on the latter.

Direct competitors are other professional organizing businesses.

Indirect competitors are other options that customers have to purchase from that aren’t directly competing with your product or service. This includes packing assistance from friends, volunteer organizers, relatives who help organizing a home office. You need to mention such competition, as well.

For each direct competitor, provide an overview of their business and document their strengths and weaknesses. Unless you once worked at your competitors’ businesses, it will be impossible to know everything about them. But, you should be able to find out key things about them, such as

• What types of customers do they serve?
• What type of professional organizing business are they?
• What is their pricing (premium, low, etc.)?
• What are they good at?
• What are their weaknesses?

With regard to the last two questions, think about your answers from the customers’ perspective. And, don’t be afraid to ask your competitors’ customers what they like most and least about them.

The final part of your competitive analysis section is to document your areas of competitive advantage. For example:

• Will you provide options for long-term contracts?
• Will you offer products or services that your competition doesn’t?
• Will you provide better customer service?
• Will you offer better pricing?

Think about ways you will outperform your competition and document them in this section of your plan.

Marketing Plan

Traditionally, a marketing plan includes the four P’s: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. For a professional organizing business plan, your marketing strategy should include the following:

Product : In the product section, you should reiterate the type of professional organizing company that you documented in your company overview. Then, detail the specific products or services you will be offering. For example, will you provide office supplies and organizational tools with each service or will you offer regular organizing visits at a discount?

Price : Document the prices you will offer and how they compare to your competitors. Essentially in the product and price sub-sections of your plan, you are presenting the products and/or services you offer and their prices.

Place : Place refers to the site of your professional organizing company. Document where your company is situated and mention how the site will impact your success. For example, is your professional organizing business located in a busy retail district, a business district, a standalone office, or is it a digital organizing business operating online? Discuss how your site might be the ideal location for your customers.

Promotions : The final part of your professional organizing marketing plan is where you will document how you will drive potential customers to your location(s). The following are some promotional methods you might consider:

• Advertise in local papers, radio stations and/or magazines
• Reach out to websites
• Distribute flyers
• Engage in email marketing
• Advertise on social media platforms
• Improve the SEO (search engine optimization) on your website for targeted keywords

Operations Plan

While the earlier sections of your business plan explained your goals, your operations plan describes how you will meet them. Your operations plan should have two distinct sections as follows.

Everyday short-term processes include all of the tasks involved in running your professional organizing business, including answering calls, planning and scheduling individual organizing sessions, overseeing accounts payable and receivable.

Long-term goals are the milestones you hope to achieve. These could include the dates when you expect to book your Xth session, or when you hope to reach $X in revenue. It could also be when you expect to expand your professional organizing business to a new city.

Management Team

To demonstrate your professional organizing business’ potential to succeed, a strong management team is essential. Highlight your key players’ backgrounds, emphasizing those skills and experiences that prove their ability to grow a company.

Ideally, you and/or your team members have direct experience in managing professional organizing businesses. If so, highlight this experience and expertise. But, also highlight any experience that you think will help your business succeed.

If your team is lacking, consider assembling an advisory board. An advisory board would include 2 to 8 individuals who would act as mentors to your business. They would help answer questions and provide strategic guidance. If needed, look for advisory board members with experience in managing a professional organizing business or successfully running a small company.

Financial Plan

Your financial plan should include your 5-year financial statement broken out both monthly or quarterly for the first year and then annually. Your financial statements include your income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statements.

Income Statement

An income statement is more commonly called a Profit and Loss statement or P&L. It shows your revenue and then subtracts your costs to show whether you turned a profit or not.

In developing your income statement, you need to devise assumptions. For example, will you see 20 clients per day, and offer move-in/move-out organizing services in addition? And will sales grow by 2% or 10% per year? As you can imagine, your choice of assumptions will greatly impact the financial forecasts for your business. As much as possible, conduct research to try to root your assumptions in reality.

Balance Sheets

Balance sheets show your assets and liabilities. While balance sheets can include much information, try to simplify them to the key items you need to know about. For instance, if you spend $50,000 on building out your professional organizing business, this will not give you immediate profits. Rather it is an asset that will hopefully help you generate profits for years to come. Likewise, if a lender writes you a check for $50,000, you don’t need to pay it back immediately. Rather, that is a liability you will pay back over time.

Cash Flow Statement

Your cash flow statement will help determine how much money you need to start or grow your business, and ensure you never run out of money. What most entrepreneurs and business owners don’t realize is that you can turn a profit but run out of money and go bankrupt.

When creating your Income Statement and Balance Sheets be sure to include several of the key costs needed in starting or growing a professional organizing business:

• Cost of equipment and office supplies
• Payroll or salaries paid to staff
• Business insurance
• Other start-up expenses (if you’re a new business) like legal expenses, permits, computer software, and equipment

Attach your full financial projections in the appendix of your plan along with any supporting documents that make your plan more compelling. For example, you might include your office location lease or a list of businesses already under contract with your organizing service.

Writing a business plan for your professional organizing business is a worthwhile endeavor. If you follow the template above, by the time you are done, you will truly be an expert. You will understand the professional organizing industry, your competition, and your customers. You will develop a marketing strategy and will understand what it takes to launch and grow a successful professional organizing business.

Professional Organizing Business Plan FAQs

What is the easiest way to complete my professional organizing business plan.

Growthink's Ultimate Business Plan Template allows you to quickly and easily write your professional organizing business plan.

How Do You Start a Professional Organizing Business?

Starting a Professional Organizing business is easy with these 14 steps:

• Choose the Name for Your Professional Organizing Business
• Create Your Professional Organizing Business Plan
• Choose the Legal Structure for Your Professional Organizing Business
• Secure Startup Funding for Your Professional Organizing Business (If Needed)
• Secure a Location for Your Business
• Register Your Professional Organizing Business with the IRS
• Open a Business Bank Account
• Get a Business Credit Card
• Get the Required Business Licenses and Permits
• Get Business Insurance for Your Professional Organizing Business
• Buy or Lease the Right Professional Organizing Business Equipment
• Develop Your Professional Organizing Business Marketing Materials
• Purchase and Setup the Software Needed to Run Your Professional Organizing Business
• Open for Business

Where Can I Download a Free Business Plan Template PDF?

Click here to download the pdf version of our basic business plan template.

Our free business plan template pdf allows you to see the key sections to complete in your plan and the key questions that each must answer. The business plan pdf will definitely get you started in the right direction.

We do offer a premium version of our business plan template. Click here to learn more about it. The premium version includes numerous features allowing you to quickly and easily create a professional business plan. Its most touted feature is its financial projections template which allows you to simply enter your estimated sales and growth rates, and it automatically calculates your complete five-year financial projections including income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements. Here’s the link to our Ultimate Business Plan Template.

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OR, Let Us Develop Your Plan For You

Since 1999, Growthink has developed business plans for thousands of companies who have gone on to achieve tremendous success.   Click here to see how Growthink’s business planning advisors can create your business plan for you.

Other Helpful Business Plan Articles & Templates

Organizational Planning Guide: Types of Plans, Steps, and Examples

Organizational planning is like charting your company’s path on a map. You need to know what direction you’re headed to stay competitive.

But what exactly is organizational planning and how do you do it effectively? This guide will cover:

The Different Components or Types of Organizational Plans?

The 5 Process Steps of Organizational Planning

Organizational planning examples.

Organizational Planning Tools

What is Organizational Planning?

Organizational planning is the process of defining a company’s reason for existing, setting goals aimed at realizing full potential, and creating increasingly discrete tasks to meet those goals.

Each phase of planning is a subset of the prior, with strategic planning being the foremost

There are four phases of a proper organizational plan: strategic, tactical, operational, and contingency. Each phase of planning is a subset of the prior, with strategic planning being the foremost.

Types of Organizational Planning

A strategic plan is the company’s big picture. It defines the company’s goals for a set period of time, whether that’s one year or ten, and ensures that those goals align with the company’s mission, vision, and values. Strategic planning usually involves top managers, although some smaller companies choose to bring all of their employees along when defining their mission, vision, and values.

The tactical strategy describes how a company will implement its strategic plan. A tactical plan is composed of several short-term goals, typically carried out within one year, that support the strategic plan. Generally, it’s the responsibility of middle managers to set and oversee tactical strategies, like planning and executing a marketing campaign.

Operational

Operational plans encompass what needs to happen continually, on a day-to-day basis, in order to execute tactical plans. Operational plans could include work schedules, policies, rules, or regulations that set standards for employees, as well as specific task assignments that relate to goals within the tactical strategy, such as a protocol for documenting and addressing work absences.

Contingency

Contingency plans wait in the wings in case of a crisis or unforeseen event. Contingency plans cover a range of possible scenarios and appropriate responses for issues varying from personnel planning to advanced preparation for outside occurrences that could negatively impact the business. Companies may have contingency plans for things like how to respond to a natural disaster, malfunctioning software, or the sudden departure of a C-level executive.

The organizational planning process includes five phases that, ideally, form a cycle.

Strategic, tactical, operational, and contingency planning fall within these five stages.

1. Develop the strategic plan

Steps in this initial stage include:

Review your mission, vision, and values

Gather data about your company, like performance-indicating metrics from your sales department

Perform a SWOT analysis; take stock of your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats

Set big picture goals that take your mission, vision, values, data, and SWOT analysis into account

2. Translate the strategic plan into tactical steps

At this point, it’s time to create tactical plans. Bring in middle managers to help do the following:

Define short-term goals—quarterly goals are common—that support the strategic plan for each department, such as setting a quota for the sales team so the company can meet its strategic revenue goal

Develop processes for reviewing goal achievement to make sure strategic and tactical goals are being met, like running a CRM report every quarter and submitting it to the Chief Revenue Officer to check that the sales department is hitting its quota

Develop contingency plans, like what to do in case the sales team’s CRM malfunctions or there’s a data breach

3. Plan daily operations

Operational plans, or the processes that determine how individual employees spend their day, are largely the responsibility of middle managers and the employees that report to them. For example, the process that a sales rep follows to find, nurture, and convert a lead into a customer is an operational plan. Work schedules, customer service workflows, or GDPR policies that protect prospective customers’ information all aid a sales department in reaching its tactical goal—in this case, a sales quota—so they fall under the umbrella of operational plans.

This stage should include setting goals and targets that individual employees should hit during a set period.

Managers may choose to set some plans, such as work schedules, themselves. On the other hand, individual tasks that make up a sales plan may require the input of the entire team. This stage should also include setting goals and targets that individual employees should hit during a set period.

4. Execute the plans

It’s time to put plans into action. Theoretically, activities carried out on a day-to-day basis (defined by the operational plan) should help reach tactical goals, which in turn supports the overall strategic plan.

5. Monitor progress and adjust plans

No plan is complete without periods of reflection and adjustment. At the end of each quarter or the short-term goal period, middle managers should review whether or not they hit the benchmarks established in step two, then submit data-backed reports to C-level executives. For example, this is when the manager of the sales department would run a report analyzing whether or not a new process for managing the sales pipeline helped the team reach its quota. A marketing team, on the other hand, might analyze whether or not their efforts to optimize advertising and landing pages succeeded in generating a certain number of leads for the sales department.

Depending on the outcome of those reviews, your org may wish to adjust parts of its strategic, tactical, or operational plans. For example, if the sales team didn’t meet their quota their manager may decide to make changes to their sales pipeline operational plan.

These templates and examples can help you start thinking about how to format your organizational plan.

This is a single page two-year strategic plan for a fictional corporation. Notice that the goals listed in the “Strategic Objectives and Organization Goals” section follow the SMART goals model: They’re specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and time-based.

Workforce Planning

Companies need to use workforce planning to analyze, forecast, and plan for the future of their personnel. Workforce planning helps identify skill gaps, inefficiencies, opportunities for employee growth, and to prepare for future staffing needs.

Use Pingboard as a tool to plan and unite your workforce. Start today for free !

This is a two-year action plan for an administration, which could also be described as a tactical plan. Organization-wide goals—aka strategic goals—that are relevant to this department are listed in the top section, while the more tactical goals for the manager of this department are listed below.

Check out this strategic plan template . You’ll notice that tasks for an individual employee fall under operational planning. Note the space within each item for the manager to leave feedback for the employee.

Organizational Planning is Vital for a Successful Business

While organizational planning is a long and complex process, it’s integral to the success of your company. Luckily, the process becomes more automatic and intuitive with regular planning and review meetings.

Use Pingboard’s org chart software to help you plan and communicate your strategy. With Pingboard users can build and share multiple versions of their org chart to help with succession plans, organization redesigns, merger and acquisitions plans. Pingboard also helps with hiring plans by allowing you to communicate open roles in your live org chart so employees understand where their company is growing and what roles they can apply for. Pingboard’s employee directory helps find successors for specific roles by allowing managers to search through their workforce for the skills and experience needed to fill a position.

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Writing the Organization and Management Section of Your Business Plan

What is the organization and management section in a business plan.

• What to Put in the Organization and Management Section

Organization

The management team, helpful tips to write this section, frequently asked questions (faqs).

vm / E+ / Getty Images

Every business plan needs an organization and management section. This document will help you convey your vision for how your business will be structured. Here's how to write a good one.

Key Takeaways

• This section of your business plan details your corporate structure.
• It should explain the hierarchy of management, including details about the owners, the board of directors, and any professional partners.
• The point of this section is to clarify who will be in charge of each aspect of your business, as well as how those individuals will help the business succeed.

The organization and management section of your business plan should summarize information about your business structure and team. It usually comes after the market analysis section in a business plan . It's especially important to include this section if you have a partnership or a multi-member limited liability company (LLC). However, if you're starting a home business or are  writing  a business plan for one that's already operating, and you're the only person involved, then you don't need to include this section.

What To Put in the Organization and Management Section

You can separate the two terms to better understand how to write this section of the business plan.

The "organization" in this section refers to how your business is structured and the people involved. "Management" refers to the responsibilities different managers have and what those individuals bring to the company.

In the opening of the section, you want to give a summary of your management team, including size, composition, and a bit about each member's experience.

For example, you might write something like "Our management team of five has more than 20 years of experience in the industry."

The organization section sets up the hierarchy of the people involved in your business. It's often set up in a chart form. If you have a partnership or multi-member LLC, this is where you indicate who is president or CEO, the CFO, director of marketing, and any other roles you have in your business. If you're a single-person home business, this becomes easy as you're the only one on the chart.

Technically, this part of the plan is about owner members, but if you plan to outsource work or hire a virtual assistant, you can include them here, as well. For example, you might have a freelance webmaster, marketing assistant, and copywriter. You might even have a virtual assistant whose job it is to work with your other freelancers. These people aren't owners but have significant duties in your business.

Some common types of business structures include sole proprietorships, partnerships, LLCs, and corporations.

Sole Proprietorship

This type of business isn't a separate entity. Instead, business assets and liabilities are entwined with your personal finances. You're the sole person in charge, and you won't be allowed to sell stock or bring in new owners. If you don't register as any other kind of business, you'll automatically be considered a sole proprietorship.

Partnership

Partnerships can be either limited (LP) or limited liability (LLP). LPs have one general partner who takes on the bulk of the liability for the company, while all other partner owners have limited liability (and limited control over the business). LLPs are like an LP without a general partner; all partners have limited liability from debts as well as the actions of other partners.

Limited Liability Company

A limited liability company (LLC) combines elements of partnership and corporate structures. Your personal liability is limited, and profits are passed through to your personal returns.

Corporation

There are many variations of corporate structure that an organization might choose. These include C corps, which allow companies to issue stock shares, pay corporate taxes (rather than passing profits through to personal returns), and offer the highest level of personal protection from business activities. There are also nonprofit corporations, which are similar to C corps, but they don't seek profits and don't pay state or federal income taxes.

This section highlights what you and the others involved in the running of your business bring to the table. This not only includes owners and managers but also your board of directors (if you have one) and support professionals. Start by indicating your business structure, and then list the team members.

Owner/Manager/Members

Provide the following information on each owner/manager/member:

• Percentage of ownership (LLC, corporation, etc.)
• Extent of involvement (active or silent partner)
• Type of ownership (stock options, general partner, etc.)
• Position in the business (CEO, CFO, etc.)
• Duties and responsibilities
• Educational background
• Experience or skills that are relevant to the business and the duties
• Past employment
• Skills will benefit the business
• Awards and recognition
• Compensation (how paid)
• How each person's skills and experience will complement you and each other

Board of Directors

A board of directors is another part of your management team. If you don't have a board of directors, you don't need this information. This section provides much of the same information as in the ownership and management team sub-section. 

• Position (if there are positions)
• Involvement with the company

Even a one-person business could benefit from a small group of other business owners providing feedback, support, and accountability as an advisory board. 

Support Professionals

Especially if you're seeking funding, let potential investors know you're on the ball with a lawyer, accountant, and other professionals that are involved in your business. This is the place to list any freelancers or contractors you're using. Like the other sections, you'll want to include:

• Background information such as education or certificates
• Services provided to your business
• Relationship information (retainer, as-needed, regular, etc.)
• Skills and experience making them ideal for the work you need
• Anything else that makes them stand out as quality professionals (awards, etc.)

Writing a business plan seems like an overwhelming activity, especially if you're starting a small, one-person business. But writing a business plan can be fairly simple.

Like other parts of the business plan, this is a section you'll want to update if you have team member changes, or if you and your team members receive any additional training, awards, or other resume changes that benefit the business.

Because it highlights the skills and experience you and your team offer, it can be a great resource to refer to when seeking publicity and marketing opportunities. You can refer to it when creating your media kit or pitching for publicity.

Why are organization and management important to a business plan?

The point of this section is to clarify who's in charge of what. This document can clarify these roles for yourself, as well as investors and employees.

What should you cover in the organization and management section of a business plan?

The organization and management section should explain the chain of command , roles, and responsibilities. It should also explain a bit about what makes each person particularly well-suited to take charge of their area of the business.

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How To Start a Professional Organizing Business

As a professional organizer, you will help people declutter their homes and lives. You will teach them how to let go of things they don’t need, and how to organize their space so that it is functional and efficient. To start this business, you’ll need to complete a few steps.

Here are the 10 steps you can take to get started on building your very own professional organizing business.

Download the Ultimate Business Plan Template

10 Steps to Launching a New Professional Organizing Business

1. choose your type of professional organizing business.

The first step in launching an organizing business is to identify the type of professional organizing business you want to launch. You might choose from the following types among others:

Home-based business : You can operate your professional organizing business from a home office. This type of business has low overhead costs, but you’ll need to be comfortable working in other people’s homes instead of in an office.

Online business : You can launch an online professional organizing business and reach clients all over the world. You’ll need a strong website and online marketing strategy to make this type of business successful.

Storefront business : You can open a brick-and-mortar organizing business. This type of business requires more overhead costs, but it can be a great way to build a brand and reach local clients.

2. Name Your Professional Organizing Business

Give your professional organizing business an identity so people will think of it as a well-known and respected brand. You can take the name of your professional organizing business from your industry, focus on a geographical location, or use your own name among other options.

The main goal for naming your professional organizing business is to make it sound appealing and trustworthy so that clients will want to work with your company.

3. Determine Your Professional Organizing Business Model

There are several possible types of business models for a professional organizing business including:

• One-on-one sessions : You can work with clients one-on-one to help them declutter and organize their homes. This type of business model requires a lot of time and energy, but you can charge higher rates.
• Group sessions : You can also offer group sessions to help people declutter and organize their homes. This type of business model is less time-consuming, but you’ll need to charge lower rates.
• Do-it-for-them service : You can offer a do-it-for-them service where you declutter and organize people’s homes for them. This type of business model is the most time-consuming, but you can charge the highest rates.
• Do-it-with-them service : You can offer a do-it-with-them service where you help people declutter and organize their homes with them. This type of business model is somewhere in between the other two options in terms of time commitment and rates.

No matter which model you choose, make sure that it aligns with your business goals and the professional organizing services you offer.

4. Choose a Legal Form for Your Business

By incorporating your professional organizing business, you will limit your liability. You can incorporate as a Limited Liability Company (LLC), a C Corporation (C-Corp), or an S Corporation (S-Corp). Or you can operate as a sole proprietorship.

The business structure you choose for your professional organizing business will determine the amount of taxes you pay and which state or federal tax forms you need to file.

Read our article comparing the most common professional organizing business structures .

5. Write a Professional Organizing Business Plan

All professional organizing business owners should develop a business plan. 

A business plan is a document that outlines the goals, strategies, and operations of a business. It can be used to secure funding from investors or lenders, as well as to guide the day-to-day operations of the business. The business plan should include information on the company’s products or services, market analysis, financial projections, and management team among other things.

When developing your professional organizing business plan and strategy, you should think about the following questions your customers might have:

• What services do you offer?
• How much do your services cost?
• Do you have any before and after pictures of your work?
• What are your qualifications?
• Can you provide a list of references?
• Do you have insurance?
• What is your cancellation policy?
• What are your hours of operation?
• Do you offer a free consultation?
• Are you bonded?
• Do you offer any discounts?
• What forms of payment do you accept?

Read our article about how to write a professional organizing business plan .

6. Apply for the Necessary Permits and Licenses

There may be required licenses and permits you need to obtain before launching your professional organizing business.

For example, if you’re going to sell organizing products, you may need a reseller’s permit and/or a retail sales license.

You must also register your professional organizing business as a legal entity with the state where you plan to do business. You can simply file an online form through your Secretary of State website.

Registering with the federal government is also essential so you can properly pay taxes for your business. You will also need an Employer Identification Number (EIN), which you can apply for at the IRS website, if you plan to hire employees.

7. Determine Your Budget & Apply for Funding as Needed

In developing your professional organizing business plan, you will figure out how much funding you need to start and grow your business.

If you have your own funds to invest in your professional organizing business, you may consider taking advantage of that. In addition to your personal funds, other forms of potential funding for your professional organizing business include traditional bank loans, SBA loans, credit cards, angel investors and family and friends.

8. Get the Technology & Software Needed to Run Your Business Efficiently

When you start your professional organizing business, it’s essential to have the right technology in place to maximize efficiency. You definitely need a computer with Internet access, and accounting software for tracking expenses and revenues. 

You may also want to invest in project management software to help keep track of your clients’ projects, as well as your own to-do list.

Other professional organizing business owners use scheduling software to manage their time and appointments with clients.

Some popular project management and scheduling software programs include Trello, Basecamp, and Wrike.

9. Market Your Professional Organizing Business to Potential Clients

Before you start selling your services , you have to let the world know you exist. The first step is to create a website so people can learn more about your services and how they benefit them.

After you launch your website, start promoting it through social media channels like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Also consider networking with other people in the professional organizing industry through social media and blogs so they can help share your business. 

You also need to start gathering the materials needed to execute on your promotions strategy, which is your strategy for attracting new customers. Professional organizing businesses should consider the following promotional strategies for which you should start getting prepared: 

• Offer free consultations to potential clients to show them what services you offer and how you can help them.
• Create helpful content on your website, such as tips for organizing your home, office, or garage.
• Develop relationships with other professionals who may be able to refer clients to your business, such as real estate agents, interior designers, and home stagers.
• Sponsor or attend community events related to organization, such as garage sales, home shows, and business expos.
• Volunteer your services to a local charity or non-profit organization to get exposure for your business.

Read our article about how to market your professional organizing business for more tips.

10. Get New Clients & Grow Your Business

When you promote your services , you’ll start to get interest from potential clients . 

Make sure you’re ready to serve these clients . Also, be sure to establish systems to ensure consistency and reduce costs. And be sure to find and train the right people to help you grow your professional organizing business.

Read our article about how to effectively grow your professional organizing business to learn more.

Starting a Professional Organizing Business FAQs

Why start a professional organizing business.

There are many reasons to start a professional organizing business. Perhaps you’re passionate about helping people get their lives in order and you want to turn that passion into a career. Or, maybe you’re good at organizing and you’re looking for a business opportunity with low start-up costs. Whatever your reason, if you’re thinking about starting a professional organizing business, there are a few things you should know.

What is Needed to Start a Successful Professional Organizing Business?

To start a successful professional organizing business, you need to be organized yourself. That means having systems in place to track your finances, manage your time, and keep your projects on track. You also need to be good at promoting your business and finding new clients. And, finally, you need to be able to execute your projects and deliver results that exceed the expectations of your clients.

How Can I Start a Professional Organizing Business From Home?

Starting a professional organizing business from home is a great way to get your business up and running quickly with minimal overhead costs. To get started, all you need is a quiet space to work, a computer, and a phone. You can also connect with clients online using video conferencing tools like Skype or Google Hangouts. Once you have the basics in place, you can start promoting your business and finding new clients.

How Can I Start a Professional Organizing Business Online?

Starting a professional organizing business online is a great way to reach a wide audience of potential clients. To get started, you need to create a website and start promoting your business through social media and other online channels. You can also use online tools to connect with clients and manage your projects. Once you have the basics in place, you can start building your business and finding new clients.

Ensure that clients can book your services online.

What are Some Tips for Starting a Professional Organizing Business?

Here are a few tips to help you get started:

• Get organized yourself. Before you can help others get organized, you need to have your own systems in place.
• Develop a business plan . This will help define your business goals and objectives and map out a path to success.
• Promote your business. Get the word out about your business through social media, networking, and advertising.
• Find new clients . Use online tools to connect with potential clients and grow your business.
• Deliver results . Exceed the expectations of your clients by delivering quality results that meet their needs.
• Grow your business . As your business grows, be sure to establish systems to ensure consistency and reduce costs.
• Train your team . As you grow your business, you’ll need to find and train the right people to help you achieve your goals.
• Manage your finances . Keep track of your income and expenses and manage your cash flow so you can continue to grow your business.
• Stay organized . As your business grows, it’s important to stay organized so you can continue to deliver high-quality results to your clients.

Where Can I Find a Simple Checklist for Starting a Professional Organizing Business?

A simple checklist to use when starting an professional organizing business follows:

• Choose Your Type of Professional Organizing Firm : This should be based on what you are best at and how much experience you have. Remember to keep your interests, skills, and experience in mind at all times.
• Name Your Professional Organizing Business : This should be done with care, as your brand is important for attracting the right customers. A simple, memorable name will go a long way.
• Choose a Legal Form for Your Business : Whether you choose to become a sole proprietorship, partnership, LLC, corporation or another option will depend on your business. Ensure that you are aware of all the implications of each type.
• Determine Your Professional Organizing Business Model : Determine how your business will make money. Will you sell products, services, or a combination of both?
• Write a Professional Organizing Business Plan : Your business plan will also help you determine what your start-up costs will be and will provide a roadmap with which you can launch and grow .
• Apply for the Necessary Permits and Licenses : In most locations you will be required to apply for a business license and/or permits before you can begin operations.
• Determine Your Budget & Apply for Funding as Needed : You will need to know how much money you have to spend on all of your business-related expenses before opening any doors. If needed, apply for a small business loan or other funding options.
• Get the Technology & Software Needed to Run Your Business Efficiently : You need to have the right tools in place to succeed. Implement software that will help you manage your time, contacts, and business operations in general.
• Market Your Professional Organizing Business to Potential Clients : A solid marketing plan will be crucial to your success. It should focus on attracting the right customers so that you can provide them with the services they truly need. 
• Get Clients & Grow Your Business : Once you have a solid marketing plan, it's time to actively pursue and secure those who could benefit the most from your services . 

Starting a professional organizing business can be a great way to help others get their lives in order, while also making a good income. However, there are many things to consider before launching such a business. Use the checklist provided to make sure you have everything covered and then put together a detailed business plan so you can hit the ground running.

Other Helpful Articles

Professional Organizer Salary: How Much Do They Make?

How To Become a Professional Organizer

10 Organizing Business Ideas For You To Start Today

Business Plan Organization and Management: How to Write Guide .

Sep 17, 2023 | Business Consulting , Business Plan , Organization and Management , Organizational Development , Strategy

Writing the Business Plan Organization and Management Section

It provides critical information for those looking for evidence that your staff has the necessary experience, skills, and pedigree to realize the objectives detailed in the rest of your business plan.

What Is the Organization and Management Section in a Business Plan?

The organization and management section of your business plan should provide details about your business structure and team. This section typically comes after the executive summary. However, some people have it further in the document after the market analysis section.

This section generally is separated into two parts. The first concerns the organization as a whole. It gives readers an overview of the company structure, which is an excellent opportunity for the reader to lift the roof off your office and peer into its inner workings. For your legal design, you may set up as a limited liability company (LLC) or nonprofit/ charity or form a partnership. It’s crucial to include this section. However, suppose you’re starting a home business or have an already operating business where you’re the only person involved. In that case, you can skip this section or show the company registration details from either the company’s house or the awarding .gov.

The second part focuses specifically on your management team and introduces readers to each member — your chance to impress them with the many accomplishments pinned to your organization’s management team.

This section may seem less important than some of the other parts of your business plan, but the truth is that your people are your business. If they’re highly competent and accomplished, the implication is that so is your business.

Of course, if you’re a sole proprietor with no management structure or any employees, this section is unnecessary other than to talk about yourself and your achievements.

The section on organization and management should outline the hierarchy, individual roles, and corresponding responsibilities. It should also highlight each person’s strengths and qualifications for their positions.

Business Plan Organization Section

The organizational section of your business plan outlines the hierarchy of individuals involved in your business, typically in a chart format. This section identifies the President or CEO, CFO, Director of Marketing, and other roles for partnerships or multi-member LLCs. If you’re a single-person home business, this section is straightforward as you are the only person on the chart.

Although this section primarily focuses on owner members, you can include outsourced workers or virtual assistants if you plan to hire them. For example, you may have a freelance web admin, marketing assistant, or copywriter. You may even have a virtual assistant who coordinates with your other freelancers. While these individuals are not owners, they hold significant responsibilities in your business.

There are various business structures, such as sole proprietorships, partnerships, LLCs, and corporations.

Detail the Legal Structure within the Business Plan Organization and Management Section

Here is an indicative list of business structures. It would help if you talked to your accountant and legal advisors to determine which legal form is the best for your business proposition.

Sole Proprietorship

When embarking on a business venture, it’s essential to consider the various structures available. A sole proprietorship is a structure whereby the business is not regarded as separate from its owner’s finances. The owner retains complete control and responsibility for the company. However, they are unable to sell stocks or bring in new owners. The business becomes a sole proprietorship if not registered under any other structure.

Partnership

When forming a partnership, it can either be a limited partnership (LP) or a limited liability partnership (LLP). One partner assumes most liability in a limited partnership (LP). In contrast, the other partners have limited liability and control over the business. Alternatively, in a limited liability partnership (LLP), all partners have limited liability from debts and actions of other partners, and there is no general partner.

Limited Liability Company

A limited company (LTD) or limited liability company (LLC) is a mixture of business structures that mixes aspects of partnerships and corporations. It offers limited personal liability to the owner and passes profits through to their tax returns.

Corporation

There are various types of corporate structures. A C-corporation enables the issuance of stock shares, pays corporate taxes instead of personal returns, and provides the highest level of personal protection from business activities. On the other hand, nonprofit corporations are similar to C corporations. However, they do not aim to make profits and are exempt from state or federal income taxes.

More information on company legal structures is available on UK.Gov and USA.SBA websites.

Describe Your Company’s Organizational Structure

This first step illustrates the positions in your organization’s employee hierarchy and how they all relate to each other.

This is usually done graphically as a guide, using an organizational chart, or “org chart” for short. People use a Microsoft tool, i.e., PowerPoint or Excel, to help.

Organization Charts typically follow a top-down hierarchy, starting with your CEO/ Managing Director in the top box at the top of the page. Lines extend down from that person’s name to boxes containing the terms of the CEO’s direct reports.

We have included an example organizational chart below for guidelines only.

Identify your business organization structure and list your team members’ strengths and skills.

Those managers then have lines extending to those who report to them, and so on, down to your lowest staff positions.

This section will give your readers a quick understanding of your management and governance structure, the size of your organization, and your lines of control and communication.

Describe your Team in your Business Plan Organization and Management Section

In your business plan’s Organization and Management section, please provide a detailed description of your team. Y ou will discuss the company’s management team, starting with the owners.

This section highlights who is involved in the running of your business and who are the support professionals. It also includes the roles and responsibilities of managers.

Suppose the company structure is a multi-owner arrangement or some other multi-owner arrangement. In that case, you’ll want to include information for every member and their percentage of ownership and ongoing involvement in the company.

It’s important to discuss how ownership interests are split, their responsibilities, what they did before securing their current position, and how they came to be involved with the company.

Here, it would help if you talked about some of your critical team members. These people are directly responsible for large portions of your business operations.

Owner/Manager/Members

Within your business o rganization and management section, y ou should introduce the team and talk about their experience, qualifications, previous companies and achievements, role in the company, and any special skills they bring with them. Please provide the following details for each owner, manager, or member of the business within your business plan:

• Percentage of ownership (if applicable)
• Level of involvement (active or silent partner)
• Type of ownership (e.g., stock options, general partner)
• Position in the company (CEO, CFO, etc.)
• Responsibilities and Duties
• Educational background
• Relevant experience and skills
• Previous employment history
• Skills that will benefit the business
• Awards or recognition received
• Compensation structure
• How each individual’s skills and experience will complement and contribute to the business’s success

Perhaps they’re an entrepreneur, business coach, exclusive advisor, or industry specialist to help you grow.

This is an ideal opportunity for companies with an Executive Board of Directors, Governance Structure, or Advisory Board to introduce them to your readers.

Executive Board

Having a board of directors is essential for your management team. Without one, you may be missing out on crucial information. This section includes details similar to those found in the ownership and management team sub-section, such as the names, areas of expertise, positions (if applicable), and involvement with the company of each board member.

Strategic Advisors

Suppose you’re looking for funding for your business or to fill a gap in your knowledge, or you may not have the funds to hire an executive board. In that case, you must inform potential partners and investors that you have a team of professionals assisting you. This includes lawyers, accountants, and any freelancers or contractors you may be working with. When listing these individuals, include their name, title, educational background, certifications, services they provide to your business, and their relationship with you (i.e., hourly rates, projects, retainer, as-needed, regular). Additionally, highlight their skills and experience that make them an asset to your team you need

Does anything else make them stand out as quality professionals (awards, past working with credible brands)?

Spotlight on the Wider Team Structure

Now, you’ve showcased the management team in its entirety. You can provide brief bios for hiring team needs or secondary members and talk at length about how the team’s combined skills complement each other and how they amplify the team’s effectiveness.

It’s also important to point out any gaps in the knowledge your team is currently suffering. Your readers will likely be savvy enough to pick up on existing holes.

Therefore, you’ll want to get ahead of these criticisms and demonstrate that you’re already aware of the positions and complementary skill sets your management team still requires and how you plan to address the knowledge gaps with future hires.

Do you need help writing your business plan o rganization and management section ? 

Every successful business plan should include the organization and management section, helping you communicate your legal structure and team.

Writing a business plan can seem overwhelming, especially when starting a small, one-person business. However, it can be a reasonably simple task. This section of the plan should be updated if there are any changes to the organization structure or team members, such as additional training, awards, or other resume changes that benefit the business.

Creating your comprehensive business plan takes planning, research, time, and a herculean effort. If, at any point, the work becomes too much to handle, we can step in to assist.

Do you want an expert “second opinion” before creating your business plan or financial forecasts? Let’s talk !

Get in Touch

Are you looking to grow your business but unsure where to start? Our small business consulting and leadership coaching services are here to help! We’ll work with you to scale your operations and achieve your goals. Plus, we offer a free 30-minute consultation to ensure we fit your needs correctly. Let’s get started!

Contact Noirwolf Consulting today using the website contact form or by emailing [email protected] or call us at +44 113 328 0868.

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Writing an Effective One-Page Business Plan: What You Need to Know (+ Free Template)

By Homebase Team

If you’ve started—or are starting—a small business, you’ve probably heard the words ‘business plan’ thrown around. That’s because a business plan is an important document with important information! Even a one-page business plan can help you address key questions early in the planning process.

That’s right—we said  one page. In many cases, there’s no need for a supermassive document that takes ages to create. In this article, we walk you through what a good business plan needs—and what a business plan one-pager should contain. 

Whether you’re writing your business plan for the first time or giving your existing plan a refresh, we’ve got your back. We’ve even got a free, downloadable business plan template to help you get started. Let’s get into it!

Why do you need a business plan?

A business plan is a blueprint for your business. It outlines everything your business needs, from goals to market to the steps you need to implement.

Business plans serve two main purposes:

• To help you set your business up for success. As you put together your business plan, you’ll be forced to think strategically about all your business goals and activities . Are they realistic? Is something likely to go wrong? What haven’t you thought of? The goal is for you to walk away feeling confident in the future of your business.
• To communicate the value of your business to others. It’s rare that entrepreneurs like yourself will go it 100% alone. You’ll likely work with partners, investors, or vendors to bring your small business to life. A business plan gives your collaborators confidence in you and your business and helps them support you in the best way possible.

Taking the time to create a business plan can feel like you’re wasting all-too-precious time, but it can help keep you focused and increase efficiency down the road. It’ll also help you make better business decisions off the bat so you can grow your small business quickly and wisely. 

What are the 7 main points in a business plan?

Every business plan is unique, which is part of the reason writing one can feel a tad overwhelming. You can’t just copy and paste the plan from another business—instead, you need to assess your business’s idea within its niche.

Luckily, the skeleton of every plan is usually very similar. Whether you’re creating a plan for a neighborhood daycare or that cool new bar down the street , here are a few main points to put into any comprehensive business plan.

1. Executive summary

Your executive summary is an overview of your business plan. 

Think about this section like a TL;DR or too long, don’t read . If someone wants to understand the gist of your business plan in just a few minutes, what information would they need to know?

2. Company overview and description

In this section, you should introduce your business to the reader. By the time they finish reading this section, they should have a good idea of who you are, what you do, and what you sell—in other words, your business’s niche.

Don’t be afraid to dive into your own background and why you decided to start this business. Building a small business is personal, and your story can go a long way in giving the reader some context.

3. Market and competitive analysis

Every business needs customers. Here’s where you’ll detail who they are and the potential target market of your business, including your ideal customer.

You’ll also want to take note of potential competitors that may impact your business. These might be direct competitors, but could also be similar businesses that may compete for your customers’ time and money. For example, if you’re opening a cycling studio, you might consider any other type of fitness studio to be a competitor.

Competition isn’t a bad thing, but being aware of your competition is one way to ensure your business stands out from the crowd. 

4. Business offerings

Here’s where you’ll outline what products or services your business will offer in more detail. It doesn’t have to be a complete laundry list, but it should give readers a general idea and show a certain degree of forethought and attention to details.

For example, if you’re opening a bakery , this might be a sample of your menu. Or if you’re an HVAC repair company , you might share an overview of the services you’ll offer your customers. This section might even mention the products or services you won’t offer and why, especially if it helps clarify how your business is unique.

5. Management and operational plan

From managing employees and inventory to securing equipment and a lease, there’s a lot that happens behind the scenes to keep things running smoothly. Every business plan should touch on how you’ll manage the day-to-day of your business.

This is also a great place to indicate key milestones and timelines so you know that you’re on track for a successful grand opening. 

6. Sales, marketing, and PR strategy

Now that you’ve got all the research and operational plans in place , it’s time to start attracting customers and securing those sales. Even with the best products or services in town, every business can use a little marketing boost. Feel free to get creative. From social media to paid ads, there are tons of ways you can spread the word about your budding business . 

7. Financial forecast and budget

No one loves to crunch financials, but when it comes to business, money talks. And a strong financial plan is key to the long-term success of your business.

This final section of your business plan should estimate the costs, revenue, and profits of your business in the short and long term. How do you plan to finance your business? What costs will you incur before opening day ? What are the ongoing costs?

Not only will this give your vendors and investors confidence in your business, but it helps you make sure that your business is profitable in the long run.

What is a one-page business plan?

A one-page business plan is essentially a condensed version of a full business plan.  

It covers all the core information about your business without overwhelming the reader with details. The goal is to summarize your business plan for yourself and potential stakeholders so they can understand your business at a glance.

Depending on your business needs, this concise document may even be all you need to get your business off the ground. Or it could serve as a stepping stone to a more robust plan in the future. 

Top benefits of a one-page business plan.

Bigger isn’t always better—and one-page business plans are here to prove it.

Here are some benefits and reasons why you might opt for a one-page business plan:

• To kickstart your business planning: A full business plan can be incredibly daunting. A one-page business plan gives you a place to start without feeling overwhelmed with the nitty gritty. 
• To share and distribute: Sometimes potential vendors, partners, or investors want to get more information about your business before they sign on officially. Instead of leaving them with a massive document, a one-page business plan helps you share the relevant need-to-know information easily.
• To focus on the key details: If you’re early on in the business ideation process and want to make sure you have all the important information, a one-page business plan can help you easily validate your business plan.
• To save time: In the long term, you may still expect to put together a full business plan at some point. However, if you’re in a time crunch, a one-page plan can help you get the important insights without the time commitment.
• To easily edit: In an ever-changing business environment, a one-page business plan is much easier to keep updated. 

Key details to include in a one-page business plan.

Above, we outlined the key components of any business plan. The key with a one-pager is to keep it brief without losing any of those important details. 

Let’s look at the sections of a business plan one-pager and dig into how you can adapt them to cover all the details of your business—all on one page. 

Summary and overview

Start your one-page plan by sharing the name of your business, what you do, and your main value proposition.

The problem—and your solution

In a few sentences, share the problem that your business solves and how you solve it. This clarifies why your business should exist, so it’s an important section!

Depending on your business, you may also want to share a few of your team members to help readers put a face to your business. Great examples include the executive chef for a restaurant, or the lead veterinarian for your vet clinic.

Target market

Briefly describe who you expect to be a customer and their characteristics. This could be in the form of a short “ideal customer” profile.

Competitor overview

Here, you’ll touch on potential competitors and what makes your business stand out.

Business timeline

Share the key milestones for your business. For example, pitch when you’ll start marketing your business, when you’ll hire employees , and when you expect to open.

Sales and marketing plan

Here, you’ll quickly highlight the key marketing activities that you’ll use to drive new customers to your business. Try to stick to the most interesting or high-value stuff, like a website or social media .

Financial projections

Outline your expected revenue , expenses, and profits to give the reader an idea of your financial future.

Our tips for creating a one-page business plan.

If you’ve ever written something with a limited word count, you know that sometimes keeping things concise can be easier said than done.

As you get writing your one-page business plan, here are some of our top tips so you can make the most of that one page.

• Focus on the need-to-know information.
• Avoid fluff and keep your sentences short.
• Link out to additional resources and material if more information is necessary.
• Don’t be afraid to strategically incorporate visuals to emphasize the important points.
• Feel free to up sections or have different versions of your one-page business plan based on who’s reading it. 
• Get creative with formatting to keep information organized.

One-page business plan example.

If you’re skeptical that all that information can fit on one page—we have proof!  Here’s an example that you can use to start thinking about your business plan.

Download our free one-page business plan template.

A one-page business plan is one of the most important pages you’ll write for your business. While there’s a lot to think about, it’s worth the effort to give both you and your partners peace of mind.

The good news is that we’ve done the heavy lifting for you! If the above one-pager looks good to you, we’ve pulled it together as a download for you. All that’s left for you to customize it for your unique business, fill in the sections, and get ready to launch your business.

Download your one-page business plan template PDF

Get your team in sync with our easy-to-use, all-in-one employee app.

One-page business plan FAQs

Why should you create a business plan.

There are several reasons you should create a business plan, such as:

• Improving your decision-making as you start and grow your business.
• Setting realistic goals and timelines.
• Attracting top-notch suppliers, investors, and even employees.
• Keeping your business profitable and your financials in order.

What types of companies need a business plan?

From brand-new small businesses to established corporations, companies of all shapes and sizes need a business plan. It’s a key part of setting your business up for success and improving your business trajectory.

Even if you already have a business plan in place, revisiting it from time to time can help you stay on track with your goals and adapt as your business changes.

Can a business plan be one page?

Yes, in many cases a business page can be one page. The trick to creating an effective one-page business plan is making sure that you’re covering the most important pieces of information. 

Our top tips? Keep it as concise and organized as possible, so you can effectively communicate the value of your business to your audience.

Writing a one-page business plan is simple. You can create a business plan from scratch or use a free template like the one above to stay on track, but generally, the steps to writing a one-page business plan include:

• Start with a short executive summary and value proposition to introduce your business.
• Share the problem your business solves and your solution.
• Give an outline of top competitors and how your business compares.
• Create a timeline of key milestones.
• Outline your sales and marketing plan for attracting customers.
• Summarize your financial projections and funding plans.

Remember:  This is not legal advice. If you have questions about your particular situation, please consult a lawyer, CPA, or other appropriate professional advisor or agency.

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Who Should be Involved in Creating a Business Plan?

Business Plan Template

• July 9, 2024

A successful business plan addresses all the aspects of business planning comprehensively and realistically.

However, writing it single-handedly without any help can result in a superficial document that fails to address crucial details.

Whether it’s structuring, strategizing, financing, or designing an implementation approach—one needs the opinions and inputs of different experts to add depth and value to the business plan.

Involving the right people can enhance the quality and usefulness of your business plans significantly. But the question is who should be involved in creating a business plan?

Let’s decode that in this blog post. But before that…

Why involve multiple people in creating a business plan?

Involving different people in your planning process helps you prepare a feasible, actionable, and well-rounded business plan addressing key components of your business plan efficiently.

Here are a few more benefits of having multiple people on your plan writing team:

• Offers you a comprehensive perspective of every department.
• Aligns your long-term objectives with individual departmental goals.
• Identifies the risks, loopholes, and opportunities that would’ve skipped individual attention.
• Enhances commitment and ownership towards the business goals.
• Provides realistic projections and financials to secure funding.
• Increases the relevance and efficiency of your strategies.

All in all, when you get multiple people on your business planning team, you get to explore the depth and breadth of different business aspects helping you build an actionable plan.

Who should be involved in creating a business plan

Here are a few stakeholders, professionals, and subject matter experts whose contribution to a business plan can make a significant difference.

1. Business owners and founders

There’s no doubt that the founding members of a business should lead the plan writing process. After all, no one can translate the concept, vision, and long-term objectives of a business better than them.

The entrepreneurs and people in the senior position add strategic value to your plan. They bring their expertise and nuanced market understanding to the table and contribute significantly to setting the overall direction of the company.

Apart from strategy development, owners can also contribute to aspects such as financial planning, resource allocation, compliance, operations, and market analysis.

2. Management team

Involving a management team and departmental heads in the plan writing process can help devise feasible and attainable departmental goals. They can offer valuable insights about the internal processes and can help in designing a realistic implementation approach.

3. Financial advisors and accountants

The backbone of any business plan is the accuracy of its financial projections. This is exactly what the financial advisors and experts will help you with.

A financial expert can make realistic projections for different financial aspects (revenue, sales, cash flow) and can help evaluate the financial sustainability and viability of your business idea.

Additionally, inputs from the financial team can assist decision-makers in making significant strategic decisions. For instance, whether to start with a new product line, open a business in a new state, or hire an in-house developer team.

4. Marketing and sales experts

Marketing and sales professionals can help you devise optimum strategies for attracting your target consumers and converting them into sales.

These people are subject matter experts when it comes to understanding market trends, target markets, competition, and consumer behavior. With their assistance, you can create a feasible marketing and sales plan and assign responsibilities to suitable team members.

5. External consultants and mentors

Hiring consultants and subject matter experts from the external environment can help your business plan in multiple ways.

Firstly, these experts offer an unbiased perspective and fresh thought processes for your business plan. Their expertise can help you understand market trends, competition, product development, operations, and overall business management in a better light.

Additionally, these experts bring the expertise of working with multiple businesses. They help identify and address the pitfalls and opportunities that remained unrecognized earlier.

Lastly, involving external people can build support and buy-in for your business plan. Their support can build credibility and win the stakeholder’s confidence in your idea.

6. Legal advisors

Legal advisors can help ensure that your business complies with all the essential rules and governance applicable to your business.

Getting them on board with your business plan will help you get invaluable advice about business structuring, contract management, and the protection of intellectual property.

7. Human resources

HR teams can also contribute to writing your business plan. These experts can help in designing your hiring plans and setting up a company culture.

Since they are the ones directly in contact with the employees, it’s important to take their opinions and insights on hiring, training, and retention strategies.

Remember, it’s your team that will turn your ideas into a success. So anything that makes them productive, happy, and motivated should be given serious thought while designing your business plan.

That’s it. Now, identify which of these stakeholders and professionals from the above list can assist you in writing a business plan and get their help to prepare a comprehensive roadmap.

The collaborative process of business planning

Business planning is a collaborative process that takes your business idea and tries to turn it into a success. Follow this step-by-step process to meet your end goal of creating an actionable business plan.

1. Initial planning meetings

The initial stages of business planning focus on building a solid foundation for your business ideas. It brings together all the stakeholders and instills clarity about the following core aspects:

• The mission, vision, and long-term objective of your business.
• The products and services you will offer.
• Key milestones and overall business strategy.

When everyone has a clear understanding of what the business does and what it aims to achieve, it’s easier to set the direction of your plan.

2. Data collection and analysis

After setting the initial direction, collect and analyze the data thoroughly to help you with strategy development.

Assign people to gather data for the target market, competitors, and financials and analyze the raw data to get the following answers:

• Target audience details
• Market share of your product
• Competitive advantage of your firm
• Marketing strategies that can attract potential customers
• Employee requirements for different business functions
• Gaps in the current market offerings
• Startup costs to kickstart your business
• Revenue projections for the next few years
• Profitability
• Break-even point of your business and much more.

These answers are essential to help you write a comprehensive business plan.

3. Drafting the business plan

Now that you have all the information essential for a business plan, you can start writing one.

Depending on your purpose and needs, you can write a traditional detailed or quick lean plan. However, make sure you include the following business plan components to make it meaty.

• Executive summary
• Company overview
• Target market analysis
• Competitors analysis
• Products and services
• Operations plan
• Marketing and sales strategies
• Key management team
• Financial plan

Now structuring information within each of these components is equally essential. And no it’s not that difficult.

How? Using a business plan template or a business planning tool can make writing your business plan much easier and more efficient.

Say goodbye to boring templates

Build your business plan faster and easier with AI

Plans starting from $7/month

4. Reviewing and finalizing the plan

Reviewing your business plan after writing it can help identify loopholes, errors, and unaligned context.

So whether you use it for internal or external purposes—review it thoroughly before putting it to use.

To make your review process more fruitful; bring legal experts, financial advisors, and prominent stakeholders on board. Ask them to review your plan and use their feedback and input to strengthen your plan.

You can now use your final plan to attract investors, communicate with an internal team, streamline your operations, or guide you with a roadmap.

A business plan is a crucial document that guides your business toward success. By involving different stakeholders and managerial heads in this process, you can make your business plan more thorough and insightful.

So why the wait? Quickly determine who could help you write a business plan and get them on board. However, instead of writing your plan from scratch, consider using a tool that can help you write faster and more structurally. Something like the Upmetrics business planning app .

With Upmetrics, you get access to 400+ business plan samples and an AI business plan generator that will help you create well-rounded business plans in no time.

Build your Business Plan Faster

with step-by-step Guidance & AI Assistance.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who should lead the creation of a business plan.

The owner or entrepreneur should lead the creation of a business plan. However, they should include people from managerial positions and subject matter experts to offer valuable input. Practically, everyone who would be involved in the implementation of the plan should be involved in creating plans.

Is it necessary to involve all department heads in the business plan?

Ideally yes. This way you can get insight and valuable feedback on strategies, goals, and the implementation approach. However, if you’re still building your team, you might not have departmental heads to guide you on specific subject matters. In such situations, consulting expert advisors from outside can be of great help.

Should investors be involved in the business plan creation?

Not really. However, consulting investors during the review phase can help you strengthen your plan. Their input can help ensure that your plan meets the expectations and criteria set by them.

How does business plan software improve the planning process?

Business plan software gives structure to your planning process and offers resources to make it a breeze. With business planning software like Upmetrics, you get help with financial projections, strategic planning, idea validation, pitch deck creation, and business plan writing. In short, everything you need to plan efficiently for your business.

Can a small business owner create a business plan alone?

Yes, they can. Although business planning requires a collaborative approach, entrepreneurs with small teams can create a business plan on their own. Using a business planning tool like Upmetrics can be useful for such businesses to create a plan from scratch.

About the Author

Upmetrics Team

Upmetrics is the #1 business planning software that helps entrepreneurs and business owners create investment-ready business plans using AI. We regularly share business planning insights on our blog. Check out the Upmetrics blog for such interesting reads. Read more

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Strategic planning: How to set and meet your long-term goals

July 1, 2024 - 10 min read

Strategic planning is an ongoing process that defines your business goals and creates a roadmap for achieving them. Done well, strategic planning will help you focus on your long-term business development, instead of just reacting to changes and challenges in the market.

Strategic planning is important for:

• Creating a framework to track your progress
• Defining the KPIs to measure your performance effectively
• Identifying and eliminating mistakes in your planning
• Proactively identifying new opportunities and threats to your business
• Informing your resource allocation
• Aligning your stakeholders around a shared purpose and objective, even when they're working across departments

It’s important to remember that strategic planning is a tool that informs your decision-making process rather than a list of steps set in stone at the start of a new business phase. Strategic plans are also different from tactical plans, which are action-oriented steps to take, or project plans, which relate to a specific aspect of your company’s work.

So, in this post, we’ll show you the  essential parts of a truly flexible and responsive strategic plan , take you through the steps to create one, and show you how to implement it in a way that supports your team.

Essential elements of a strategic plan

Let’s start with the common elements of a strategic plan and the things you can consider as you lay one out. 

The more you understand these aspects, the easier it will be to create a plan that bridges the gap between your planned strategy and the real-world work it entails. 

Values statement

Your values are the principles that guide your professional behavior and the decisions you make. In a values statement, you define what’s important to your organization and how you want to conduct business. 

Values statements influence the way businesses work internally as well as the way they build relationships with their customers. For example, values can inform everything from workplace communications , to the training and support you provide, to the way you recognize achievements within your team. 

There’s a lot of overlap between business values and company culture , and this internalization is what makes values so central to strategic planning. 

When you look at your goals for the next three to five years (the period typically covered by a strategic plan), you should make sure your plans align with the way you want your employees and customers to experience your business. 

Clarifying your values at the beginning of the strategic planning process helps you keep this in mind, even if your plan evolves.  

Vision statement

Your organization’s vision statement sets out your long-term aspirations, focusing on what you want to achieve in the future. Vision statements should be concise, aspirational, and connected to your business’s core values — like the ones you laid out in the first section of your strategic plan. 

Because of the motivational element of a vision statement, it can be helpful to involve different stakeholders from across your organization (and even your client base) when you write it. This helps create a vision statement everyone feels represented by, which you can rally around when your work runs into challenges later. 

Mission statement

In contrast to the vision statement, your organization’s mission statement describes why it exists, who it serves, and what it does. It also explains — in a nutshell — how you intend to achieve your vision. 

For example, a creative and design agency’s vision statement might be:

“ To be the premier creative agency in our city, transforming businesses through innovative visual experiences. ” 

This could translate into a mission statement of: 

“ To create exceptional, user-centric designs that combine creativity and modern techniques to drive client success. ” 

As you can see, the mission statement switches focus from the ideals laid out in the vision to the practical steps that make those ideals a reality. 

SWOT analysis

SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. SWOT analysis helps you understand the internal factors that could impact your strategic plan (your strengths and weaknesses). It also gives you a broader understanding of how your organization fits into the business landscape (the opportunities and threats). 

Another useful term for some business models is “PEST analysis,” which stands for political, economic, social, and technological. This type of “environmental scan” can give business leaders a deeper understanding of the external factors that could influence the entire organization during their next planning cycle. 

Understanding the internal and external pressures on your business before you start implementing your strategic plan will help you position yourself for success, develop strategies to gain a competitive advantage, and manage potential risks .

The business goals section of a strategic plan explains what your company wants to achieve in concrete terms. 

One of the most popular ways to approach goal setting is to use SMART principles , choosing goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. 

With SMART goals, you gain a clear sense of purpose (from the specificity of the plan), motivation (from the achievability and relevance of the goals), and an additional push from a deadline. What’s more, the measurable aspect means you can gauge your progress and compare your achievements to the anticipated results. 

Other goal-setting techniques used by businesses include: 

• The balanced scorecard (or BSC) approach, which considers the goals from four perspectives: financial, customer, internal process, and learning and growth. This aligns the planned business activities with the company’s core vision and values, not just the finances.
• Objectives and key results (OKR) frameworks, which look at the history, benefits, and key components of your goals to determine your focus. 
• Management by objectives (MBO), which emphasizes the importance of clear goals, involves employees in decision making, and bases evaluations on whether the goals were achieved. 

Your objectives are the actions you’ll take to achieve your goals. 

To return to the agency example above, if one of the goals was to build long-term relationships with clients to ensure their ongoing success, the objectives could include:

• Establishing a system for gathering feedback and reviews 
• Conducting regular client satisfaction surveys 
• Regularly sharing actionable client insights with your wider team 

Objectives start to put your strategic plan into more practical terms, so you can order or categorize them as you lay them out. Grouping or prioritizing your objectives will make it far easier to manage your resources, delegate tasks, and show your team which of the objectives they should address first. 

Action plans

Finally, your action plans , which are sometimes described as “tactics” or “approaches,” outline the specific steps you’ll take to achieve your objectives. These plans break your objectives down into actionable tasks and subtasks — the stepping stones that take you through your strategic plan.

Action plans address the way the rubber hits the road, so it can be helpful to include some buffer room in this area of your strategic plan. Some businesses even make contingency plans at this stage before introducing the plan to their team members. 

Considering contingencies now means that when changes occur, you should be able to adjust your plan rather than starting from scratch once the emergency has passed. 

When you truly get to grips with these elements, you’re more likely to see the benefits of strategic planning when work begins. These benefits include: 

• A clear direction and focus for your team
• Increased engagement from teams that understand their roles and goals
• Effective decision making informed by up-to-date information
• A proactive management approach , set up to take advantage of opportunities and address challenges as they arise
• Long-term sustainability , based on an understanding of the business environment and risk mitigation 

Having said this, it’s essential to remember that any of these aspects could change over the course of the years you’ve planned for. Considering the vision, values, and opportunities that drive your business — and the steps you’ll take to put them into practice — should be an ongoing process as your work develops. 

When you get to grips with the idea of using your strategic business plan as a shared reference rather than a rulebook, you’re ready to create a plan of your own. 

Now, we’ll look at the strategic planning process in more detail. The examples here will show you how to bring an effective strategic plan together, align your  work with your goals, and put your team in the best position to focus, prioritize, and achieve their ongoing goals.

How to make a strategic plan: Step-by-step guide

The steps we detail here can help you create a solid but responsive strategic plan. 

1. Assess your business environment

• Analyze internal pressures within your business 
• Research the external environment you’re operating in
• Gather data and feedback on your team’s past performance 

Strategy formulation starts with a thorough understanding of what’s going on inside your business and in the external environment. Alongside the SWOT analysis we discussed above, many strategic frameworks start with an analysis of your company’s current position, including your performance in the previous fiscal year or planning cycle. 

With this assessment, you’ll set yourself up to create and measure the short- and long-term goals that can bring your company’s vision to life. 

To make these judgments more accurately, strategic planners often pull up the following records at the very beginning of the process (and then continue to reference them as time goes on): 

• Time tracking reports to assess what the team has been able to achieve in their billable hours and identify areas for improved efficiency 
• Cash flow data to assess their budget, find out where investments can be made, and identify areas where they need to reduce waste
• Feedback reports from customers, clients, or their team to quantify what the business does well, and identify areas where they’re not fully addressing a pain point 
• Resource allocation, including the way tasks are delegated among the number of team members available (this information is particularly useful for human resources teams at the start of a new phase, as they may have to, for example, hire additional employees to tackle a larger project)

Once you’ve identified any issues with past performance, you can consider areas for improvement, what you can realistically achieve, and take the other factors that will impact your desired outcomes into account. 

2. Define goals, strategic objectives, and performance metrics  

• Write out your long-term goals and break them into achievable steps
• Decide how best to measure and compare your progress 
• Find a logical way to visualize your tasks and your progress to keep your team on track

With the groundwork in place, you can turn your focus to operational planning and strategy development. 

In this planning phase, you consider the common goals shared across your organization. Then, you start to break them down into the short-term tasks you’ll need to achieve, and even the milestones that could make up those individual projects. 

With the goals as a framework, the next stage is to plan how to measure and visualize your progress. 

Consider which teams or team members need an overview and how to present the information in a way that fits their work. For example, while a marketing team might view a product launch as a series of dependent steps, the development team behind the scenes might be dealing with a backlog of tickets or bugs, where a linear overview doesn’t fit their more cyclical methodology. 

Finally, identify the first tasks in your strategic plan and decide who to delegate them to, how to communicate this, and how you’ll make sure the team members have the tools they need to start. This will make the execution phase much smoother. 

3. Implement and share your plan

• Onboard your team
• Delegate tasks 
• Ask for initial feedback 

Prior to this stage of the process, strategic planning was largely the responsibility of senior leadership. Now, you move to strategy implementation, where you bring your team members up to speed, assign ownership of the different aspects of the plan, and give them the tools they need to track their work and collaborate. 

Your exact strategy execution depends on the size of your organization, the planning tools you prefer to use, and the structure of your teams. 

For example, you might share a plan document, explaining the next steps while emphasizing your intention to adjust the steps if necessary. Other teams might invite employees to a shared workspace where they’ll find the goals and milestones. Some teams might hold a formal meeting to launch the new strategy, whereas others will see it as an extension of their current work.

However you approach this implementation, once the team is up to speed, you can start working toward your strategic goals. Remember, it can be beneficial to ask for feedback from your team, even at this early stage, to promote transparency and make sure you’re on track. 

4. Revise and restructure 

• Gather data on your progress 
• Create and share reports with your team and key stakeholders 
• Respond to changes and communicate the updated strategic plan

As we said above, successful strategic planning can respond to change. When you set out to create a strategic plan rather than a project plan or an annual business plan, you expect to adjust it as you learn more. The framework you create in the first three steps puts you in a strong position to do this. 

As your team starts to work through the action plans, you should monitor: 

• Task status data , which can help you identify or preempt delays and bottlenecks
• Your team’s capacity , to avoid burnout, reassign tasks, or adjust resource allocation
• Your KPIs , to see how your real-time performance matches up to any projections or expectations you created in the initial planning phases 

Sharing reports with this information with stakeholders can motivate your team, help them adjust their priorities, and invite suggestions for improvements. The most useful reports will be based on real-time data, so you know you’re acting on the latest information, staying agile, and adjusting your plan as necessary. 

It is possible to plan for and implement these steps with spreadsheets, emails, and shared documents, but it’s not ideal. 

With several potential versions of your plan in play, it can be difficult to locate the most up-to-date information in email chains, announcements, or shared documents.

With work shared across your company, it can be hard to communicate and share resources without creating delays, bottlenecks, and information silos. 

And with collaborative, aspirational goals, you need to find a way to unite your team around your shared purpose.  

So now, let’s turn to the software features that can help you assess, define, implement, and refine your strategic planning and support your team as you put it into action.

Get the essential tools for strategic planning with Wrike

With Wrike, you can: 

• Assess a wealth of data relating to your work , whether you’re making a new strategic plan or adapting as you go
• Implement your plan easily , and help your team see how their tasks contribute to your organization’s goals
• Align your entire team , even when multiple, distinct departments have a role to play 

Note: Wrike gathers data on your team’s work, performance, and capacity as they move through their tasks, and we use this information to generate the highly detailed, targeted insights you need for ongoing strategic planning. You can also import data from XLS spreadsheets , Outlook Tasks, or MS Project when you set up Wrike, so you can start with all this essential planning data at your fingertips. 

Generate comprehensive overviews and reports to align your teams

Wrike’s real-time, dynamic workspaces make it effortless to set and share your organizational goals. In your workspace, you can list every task that makes up an objective and every milestone that represents a goal, and make sure everyone on your team knows the role they have to play. 

Most importantly, Wrike gives you multiple ways to create a business strategy map, so every subteam — and even the individuals who make them up — can view their progress in a way that makes sense for them. 

Try adding some of these views to your organization’s workspace:  

• The Table view gives you a spreadsheet-style overview of your tasks, folders, projects, or spaces.
• A project dashboard is configured with widgets to filter your work management data to show the headline statistics, track your key performance indicators, alert you to risks, and show you the project status information you need to plan your approach.
• A Gantt chart helps you visualize your project timeline , find the critical path , and plan for the task dependencies that inevitably arise when a large team collaborates.
• The Kanban board represents your tasks as cards, giving you an instant overview, helping you identify bottlenecks, and visualizing where each task sits in your workflow.
• Wrike’s workload management tools help you accurately assess your team’s capacity and easily reassign tasks to help you meet your deadlines and goals.

Cross-tagging for effortless resource sharing 

Wrike’s unique cross-tagging feature is a game changer for organizations that need to bring scattered or cross-team employees together. 

Put simply, cross-tagging simplifies asset management, leads to better connectivity within and across teams, and dismantles the information silos that can slow a project down. 

Seamless communication in one platform

With Wrike, you can communicate seamlessly across your entire organization, with an intuitive system of notifications and automations. 

For example, whenever someone in your workspace is assigned a new task, they’ll receive a notification in Wrike, and also through one of the messaging platforms Wrike integrates with if you choose. The task (along with all the files and information they need to get started) will automatically appear in their personal dashboard, and they can start planning their approach straight away.

This is a fantastic way to speed up your review and approval workflows . Simply set tasks to notify designated approvers when they reach a certain status, or tag requested changes to team members with a simple @mention. 

This system speeds up your work and saves the confusion of endless internal email chains. It also builds the accountability and sense of ownership that can help keep your team on track to achieve their strategic goals. 

Strategic planning templates to get started fast

With Wrike, you can build a custom, automated workspace that meets all your team’s needs. 

Whether you’re looking for a single platform to track progress for a compact team or you need to scale up as you grow, Wrike helps you draw your strategic plan from a central source of truth and keeps everyone in the loop as you work toward your goals. 

To make strategic planning even easier, Wrike includes templates to help you build your workspace with your goals in mind. 

For example: 

• The strategic action plan template gives you features to optimize your task management , with departmental folders; daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly dashboards; and a clear picture of your objectives.
• The OKR template helps you define and work toward your objectives and key results at an earlier stage of the strategic planning process. This template is set up to record specific goals and metrics and determine the tactics to help you achieve them in Wrike. 
• The business goals template will help you set clear objectives and simplify your internal strategic planning. This template focuses on assigning accountability and tracking your project milestones, so you can set solid targets, communicate effectively, and collaborate cohesively from the very beginning of your new planning cycle.

Plan strategically, optimize with Wrike 

Strategic planning requires oversight, nuanced understanding, and an element of flexibility. When your team works in Wrike, you access all this, and more, with ease. 

Take a look at some of the results our customers have seen: 

• Staffing and recruiting company Aerotek cut weeks from its planning time and reduced internal emails by 85–90% .
• Manufacturing and technology specialist House of Design saved 16,600 hours in three years by streamlining its workflows and collaboration systems.
• TV advertising agency Marketing Architects slashed the response time on approvals from one day to only 20 minutes .
• Health, technology, and software company Fitbit is saving over 400 hours in meetings each year, and spending 50% less time on timeline building and management. 

From your first goal-setting meetings, to bringing your team on board, to honing your plans as you learn more, Wrike gives you all the tools you need to make your strategic planning successful. 

Morgan Jones

As a Content Marketing Manager at Wrike, Morgan is focused on developing and creating content for various channels, including blog posts, articles, social media copy, and email newsletters. With 10+ years of marketing experience, she has created content and marketing materials for various industries, including tech, franchise operations, financial institutions, and an international professional association. Her interests are in communication, collaboration, and productivity. She lives outside Orlando, Florida, with her husband and three children.

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How to Use a Business Roadmap Template for Strategic Planning

Strategic planning plays a crucial role in the success of any business. It allows organizations to set clear goals, align resources, define priorities, and make informed decisions. However, developing a strategic plan from scratch can be a daunting and time-consuming task. That's where a business roadmap template comes in handy. In this article, we will explore the importance of strategic planning in business and delve into the details of using a business roadmap template effectively. What is Strategic Planning? Strategic planning is the process of charting a course for the future of an organization. It involves analyzing the current state of the business, identifying opportunities and threats, and defining a clear direction for future growth. Without a well-defined strategic plan, businesses can easily lose focus, miss opportunities, and fail to adapt to changing market conditions. Similar to a roadmap, a strategic plan lays out the plan for achieving the organization's long-term objectives. It includes a framework for decision-making, helps allocate resources effectively, and assists in anticipating and adapting to any changes in the market. Key Elements of Effective Strategic Planning Clear vision and mission statements: These statements define the organization's purpose, values, and aspirations. They provide a sense of direction and inspire employees to work towards a common goal. Situational analysis: This involves assessing the internal and external factors that may impact the business. By understanding the business's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, businesses can make informed decisions and develop strategies that leverage their strengths and mitigate potential risks. Goals and objectives: These are specific, measurable targets that the organization aims to achieve. Setting clear goals and objectives provides a sense of focus and direction, enabling employees to align their efforts towards achieving them. Strategies and action plans: These outline the approach and steps required to achieve the goals. Strategies provide a roadmap for how the organization will reach its objectives, while action plans break down the strategies into actionable steps, assigning responsibilities and timelines. Performance measurement: This requires tracking progress towards the goals and making necessary adjustments. By regularly monitoring key performance indicators and evaluating the effectiveness of strategies, organizations can identify areas for improvement and make informed decisions to stay on track. What Are Business Roadmap Templates? A business roadmap template is a pre-designed document that outlines the strategic goals, activities, timelines, and dependencies of a project or initiative. It serves as a visual representation of the planned journey towards achieving the desired outcomes, and it typically includes sections for defining goals, identifying tasks, allocating resources, and tracking progress. These templates tend to come in various formats, like spreadsheets, presentations, and online tools. Factors to Consider When Choosing a Template Choosing the right business roadmap template is essential so that it aligns with the organization's goals and requirements. When making a selection, it is important to consider several factors that can contribute to the effectiveness and usability of the chosen template. Flexibility: Confirm the template allows for customization and adapts to the unique needs of your business. A flexible template can accommodate changes and updates as the organization's goals and strategies evolve over time. User-friendly: Look for a template that is intuitive and easy to use, even for users with limited technical skills. A user-friendly interface can save time and reduce the learning curve, enabling teams to focus on the content and analysis rather than struggling with the tool itself. Compatibility: Verify that the template can be easily integrated into your existing tools and workflows. Compatibility with commonly used software platforms, such as Microsoft Office or project management tools, can streamline the process of creating and sharing the roadmap. Visual appeal: A visually appealing template can help engage stakeholders and make the information more accessible. Clear and attractive visuals, such as charts, graphs, and icons, can enhance comprehension and retention of the roadmap's content. Common Types of Business Roadmap Templates There are various types of business roadmap templates available, depending on the specific needs and goals of the organization. Each template serves a different purpose and provides a framework for planning and tracking different aspects of the business. Strategic roadmap: This template focuses on long-term strategic goals and the initiatives required to achieve them. It provides a high-level overview of the organization's vision, mission, and key objectives. The strategic roadmap helps align teams and departments towards a common goal, so everyone is working towards the same strategic direction. Product roadmap: This template is used to plan and track the development of a specific product or service. It outlines the product's lifecycle, from concept to launch and beyond, highlighting key milestones, features, and enhancements. A product roadmap helps product managers and development teams prioritize tasks, allocate resources, and communicate the product's roadmap to stakeholders. Technology roadmap: This template outlines the adoption and integration of technology within the organization. It identifies the technology initiatives, upgrades, and investments necessary to support the company's strategic objectives. A technology roadmap helps IT departments and decision-makers plan for future technology needs, for a smooth transition and alignment with the overall business strategy. Marketing roadmap: This template helps plan and coordinate marketing activities and campaigns. It outlines the marketing objectives, target audience, key messages, channels, and timelines. A marketing roadmap allows marketing teams to visualize their strategies, allocate resources effectively, and track the progress of their campaigns. It guarantees that marketing efforts are aligned with the overall business goals and objectives. Step-by-Step Guide to Using a Business Roadmap Template for Strategic Planning Now that you understand the importance of strategic planning and how to choose the right business roadmap template, let's dive into the step-by-step process of using the template effectively: Setting Your Strategic Goals Consider the long-term objectives of your business and identify specific outcomes you want to achieve. Make sure your goals are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound) and aligned with your vision and mission statements. Filling Out Your Business Roadmap Template Enter the goals in the designated section and break them down into smaller, actionable tasks. Assign owners, set deadlines, and establish dependencies between tasks. Use visual elements such as timelines, Gantt charts, or progress bars to make the information easier to understand. Reviewing and Adjusting Your Strategic Plan Monitor progress towards your goals, track key performance indicators, and gather feedback from stakeholders. Based on these reviews, make necessary adjustments to the plan and update the roadmap template accordingly. Overall, strategic planning is essential for business success, and a business roadmap template can greatly simplify and streamline the process. By understanding the importance of strategic planning, choosing the right template, and following a step-by-step guide, businesses can effectively utilize a business roadmap template for their strategic planning needs. Leverage a business roadmap template with Wrike's strategic planning tools. Start a free trial today and guide your business towards strategic success. Note: This article was created with the assistance of an AI engine. It has been reviewed and revised by our team of experts to ensure accuracy and quality. 

Strategic Success: Overcoming Common Hurdles in Implementing Organizational Strategies

The successful implementation of organizational strategies is key to achieving strategic success. However, this is often easier said than done, as organizations face various hurdles along the way. In this article, we will explore the common hurdles in strategy implementation and provide insights into how organizations can overcome them to achieve their desired outcomes. Understanding Organizational Strategies Organizational strategies are the plans and actions that organizations put in place to achieve their long-term goals and objectives. These strategies provide a detailed outline for how an organization will allocate its resources, compete in the market, and ultimately achieve success. Organizational strategies are not just limited to large corporations. They are equally important for small businesses, non-profit organizations, and even government agencies. Regardless of the size or nature of the organization, having a well-defined strategy is crucial for long-term success. The Importance of Strategic Planning Helps organizations anticipate and adapt to changes in the business environment. By conducting a thorough analysis of internal and external factors, organizations can identify potential opportunities and threats.  Assists in aligning the efforts of employees and departments. When everyone in the organization is aware of the overall goals and strategies, they can work together towards achieving them.  Provides a roadmap for resource allocation. By setting clear goals and objectives, organizations can prioritize their resources and investments.  Common Hurdles in Strategy Implementation Despite careful planning and preparation, organizations often face hurdles when it comes to implementing their strategies. These hurdles can hinder progress and prevent organizations from realizing the full potential of their strategic initiatives. Let's explore some of the common hurdles in strategy implementation. Lack of Clear Communication When the strategic goals and objectives are unclear or not effectively communicated to all levels of the organization, it can result in confusion and employees not understanding their roles and responsibilities. This lack of clarity can greatly impact the successful implementation of the strategy. Clear communication is essential in ensuring that everyone in the organization is on the same page. It helps align everyone's efforts towards the common goal, and it fosters a sense of unity and purpose. Overall, this can be accomplished by providing regular updates and feedback to employees. Open and transparent communication channels create an environment of trust and collaboration, enabling employees to contribute their ideas and concerns, ultimately enhancing the strategy implementation process. Resistance to Change Employees may resist changes that come with the implementation of new strategies due to fear of the unknown, concerns about job security, or the perception that the changes may not be in their best interest. As such, overcoming resistance to change requires effective change management strategies. Leaders need to address employees' concerns and fears by providing clear explanations of why the change is necessary and how it will benefit both the organization and the individuals within it.  Additionally, creating a supportive and inclusive culture that embraces change is crucial. Leaders should encourage open dialogue, provide training and development opportunities, and recognize and reward employees' efforts and contributions during the implementation process. Insufficient Resources Without the necessary resources, organizations may struggle to execute their strategic initiatives successfully. Therefore, it becomes imperative to secure sufficient resources and then allocate them accordingly. All of this involves careful planning, as organizations need to assess their current resource capabilities and identify any gaps that need to be filled. What's more, they need to prioritize and allocate resources based on the critical areas that will have the most significant impact on the strategy's success.  In addition, companies can explore partnerships and collaborations to access additional resources. By leveraging external expertise and resources, organizations can overcome resource limitations and enhance their strategy implementation capabilities. Overcoming the Hurdles While these hurdles can be daunting, there are strategies that organizations can employ to overcome them and ensure successful strategy implementation. Let's explore some of these strategies. Building a Strong Communication Framework Effective communication is key to overcoming the hurdle of lack of clear communication. It is essential for organizations to establish a strong communication framework that ensures the strategic goals and objectives are clearly communicated to all employees. This involves regular communication channels, such as team meetings, email updates, and intranet platforms, to keep everyone informed and aligned. In addition, organizations can leverage technology to facilitate communication. They can invest in collaboration tools that enable real-time communication and document sharing across teams and departments. These tools not only improve efficiency but also promote collaboration and knowledge sharing, which are crucial for successful strategy implementation. Managing Change Effectively To address resistance to change, organizations must manage the change process effectively. This involves providing employees with the necessary information, training, and support to help them adapt to the changes brought about by the implementation of new strategies. Engaging employees in the change process and addressing their concerns can significantly reduce resistance and increase buy-in. One effective strategy for managing change is to create a change management team or committee within the organization. This team can be responsible for developing and implementing a comprehensive change management plan that includes clear communication, training programs, and support mechanisms. Businesses can also provide ongoing support to employees during the change process. This can mean coaching or mentoring programs to help individuals navigate the challenges associated with change.  Allocating Resources Wisely Organizations should carefully allocate their resources to maximize the chances of successful strategy implementation. This involves conducting a thorough resource analysis to identify any resource gaps and then allocating resources in a strategic and prioritized manner. Effective resource allocation ensures that the necessary tools, technology, and talent are available to support the execution of the organizational strategies. Companies can consider leveraging partnerships and collaborations to optimize resource allocation. By forging strategic alliances with external organizations or industry experts, organizations can access additional resources and expertise that may be otherwise unavailable. Furthermore, organizations can invest in continuous learning and development programs to enhance the skills and capabilities of their workforce. By providing employees with opportunities to expand their knowledge and acquire new competencies, organizations can strengthen their resource base and increase their capacity to execute strategies effectively. The Role of Leadership in Strategy Implementation Effective leadership plays a crucial role in driving successful strategy implementation. For instance, leaders must clearly articulate the vision and purpose behind the organizational strategies. They need to craft a compelling narrative that resonates with employees and inspires them to actively participate in the implementation process. By providing a clear sense of direction, leaders can create alignment and drive momentum towards the achievement of strategic goals. Leaders must also encourage team collaboration, by creating an environment that fosters open communication and values diverse perspectives. By promoting teamwork and collaboration, leaders can leverage the collective intelligence and creativity of their teams, leading to innovative solutions and successful strategy implementation. Implementing organizational strategies is a complex process that requires careful planning, effective communication, and perseverance. By understanding the common hurdles faced during strategy implementation and employing the strategies outlined in this article, organizations can overcome these hurdles and achieve strategic success. Through clear communication, effective change management, and resource allocation, organizations can navigate the path towards successful strategy implementation, ultimately driving sustainable growth and competitive advantage. Unravel strategic success by overcoming common hurdles in implementing organizational strategies with Wrike. Start your free trial now and set your organization on the path to success. Note: This article was created with the assistance of an AI engine. It has been reviewed and revised by our team of experts to ensure accuracy and quality.

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Warner organizing Senate Democrats to ask Biden to leave presidential race: reports

WASHINGTON — Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., is working to organize a group of Democratic senators to ask President Joe Biden to exit the presidential race, The Washington Post reported Friday.

Warner, chair of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee, has reportedly been raising concerns that Biden cannot effectively run against former President Donald Trump following Biden’s disastrous debate performance last week.

A Warner spokesperson did not respond to USA TODAY’s request for comment on Friday afternoon. NBC , Axios and other outlets also confirmed the effort.

Senators are considering pursuing a meeting at the White House with Biden to discuss their concerns in person, according to the Post, while others are waiting to see Biden’s interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, which aired on Friday night.

When asked about Warner’s desire to have him step aside, Biden told reporters Friday, “He’s the only one.”

Many Democrats have privately shared concerns about their presidential candidate in the wake of the debate, in which Biden repeatedly stumbled in his answers to questions. Still, only a handful of lawmakers have publicly called for him to step aside, and only a few senators have spoken out about the issue at all. The Senate has been out of session with senators away from Washington for two weeks.

More: 'I'm the nominee': Biden calls out Democrats pushing for him to withdraw from election

Others have remained public backers of the president, who says he does not plan to step aside.

“We said we will stand with him,” said Maryland Gov. Wes Moore following a meeting between several Democratic governors and the president at the White House this week. “The president has always had our backs, we’re going to have his back as well.”

Sen. Tim Kaine, Warner’s fellow Democratic Senator from Virginia, also expressed support for Biden during a roundtable discussion at Market Street Coffee in Petersburg, his first campaign stop of the “ Salute to Service ” tour on Monday.

“The bottom line is, Joe Biden is our president. He’s a patriotic American. He’s done a good job. He puts others first, not himself,” he said.

The fallout from the debate has made for a remarkable turn in an already historic presidential race that pits two presidents against one another: the oldest president in American history and the first former president to be convicted of a felony.

Senate Democrats, in particular, have much at stake at the top of the ticket: They are on defense this year, defending multiple vulnerable incumbents who are already tasked with outperforming the president. Any additional perceived weaknesses could make that even more challenging.

However, many lawmakers are planning to wait until they see robust polling indicating how voters feel about the president following the debate.

A USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll released earlier this week indicates voters slightly prefer Trump to Biden 41% to 38%, a shift from a May poll that showed them tied at 37% to 37%.

Elizabeth Beyer contributed.

I was scammed out of nearly $300,000 and was forced to abandon my retirement dreams

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Leonid Shteyn. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Last year, I started looking for ways to make more money from my retirement savings . I'm 70, and my wife, who is also retired, is 68. We were worried about having enough money to live with rising inflation. We also wanted to have something to leave our four grandchildren, two of whom have special needs.

I researched investment options online and eventually reached out to a friend. He connected me to a company he was investing in. I checked the company out online, and everything seemed above board. I spoke with a professional financial planner tied to the company.

Still, I was cautious. I opened an account with just $250. Then, I transferred $10,000. When that investment began to grow , I wanted to go all in. I withdrew $100 from the account to make sure it was legit. After that withdrawal was processed, I transferred all my money: $256,470.

Things quickly became strange

After that, things started to get strange. The so-called investment company asked me to take out a line of credit . They encouraged me to invest in bitcoin and started charging me steep commissions.

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One day, I got an email, reportedly from a blockchain, the digital wallet where people keep bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies . When I looked closely, I noticed that one digit in the email was off—it was a scam meant to look like an official blockchain communication.

That's when I knew something was very wrong.

I trusted the big bank that the scammers used

Still, the so-called investment company called me, asking for more money. I got my own lawyer, who looked up the company's legal representation. He couldn't find any licensed lawyer with the name I'd been given. Next, I hired a private investigator. He tracked one scammer to Bulgaria and another to the US.

My lawyer realized that I had sent most of my funds to an account at Bank of America . As an immigrant, I trusted Bank of America intrinsically. I never would have transferred money to a small bank or international establishment, but if you can't trust them, who can you trust?

Unfortunately, I feel Bank of America failed me terribly. Even after my lawyer alerted them to what was happening, they cleared a check I'd written to the scammers. They ignored requests from my bank to look at the fraud, and after three requests, my bank gave up.

Within three months, I went from having a healthy retirement savings to having $20,000 in the bank. With lawyer fees and the private investigator, I was out nearly $300,000.

Older people, like myself, need help to protect themselves

This whole debacle is no one's fault but my own. The thing is, I'm a smart guy. I ran a major business for 30 years. I am good at vetting people—or at least I thought.

What frustrates me is that the lack of government oversight allows scams like this to thrive. I contacted my local police department, and they said they'd investigate. I didn't hear from them, so I called back. They told me they have 600 cases like this and only three investigators. When I heard that, I knew the chances of my case being solved were slim to none.

People always ask me what advice I'd give other seniors, but I think that's the wrong question. Scammers will always exist, and people, especially older people, will always be vulnerable. We need to be able to trust the government and major institutions like Bank of America to stop this fraud. I believe they don't because they make money in interest and fees from these fraudulent accounts.

My retirement looks a lot different now

I've started from scratch a lot in my life. I immigrated from the Czech Republic to New York in 1989 and later moved from New York to Texas. But it's hard to start over at 70. I've been sending out my résumé and looking for work as a consultant, but I haven't had any leads.

I'm lucky to have a house and cars that are paid off and still have some money in the bank. I've abandoned my dream of helping my grandkids or traveling in retirement. I'm just hoping my wife and I have enough to live on.

Editor's note: In a statement to Business Insider, Bank of America said: "We don't want any bank's clients to become victims of scams. We try to work with victims and their banks to return the funds when feasible, but unfortunately, this is not always possible. We encourage clients to do thorough due diligence to ensure that they are transferring funds to legitimate businesses."

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