16 min Business plans have a reputation for being something only tech startups need when they’re chasing investors—a serious document packed with forecasts, funding rounds and ambitious growth charts.
But they’re just as useful for small businesses, whether you’re opening a physio clinic, starting a coaching practice or running a beauty salon.
The problem is that many templates seem designed for venture-backed companies, not for how small businesses actually operate.
Let’s skip all that. This guide goes straight to the essentials: what actually needs to be in a business plan, what order it makes sense to write things in, and, most importantly, why.
You’ll get to watch a real example take shape as we go—no abstract theory or guesswork.
Here’s what you’ll walk away with:
- Clarity on exactly what should go in your plan.
- A step-by-step approach to writing each section in a logical order.
- An understanding of how the parts connect, using a real case study.
Throughout, we’ll build out a sample business plan for Maya, a coach who helps new managers grow into confident leaders.
If you haven’t thought much about your marketing yet, pair this with our guide on building a small business marketing plan. Think of your business plan as the destination—your marketing plan is the roadmap.
What’s a business plan?
A business plan puts your ideas on paper.
It spells out what your business does, who it serves, how it plans to attract customers, how it’ll run day to day, and how it expects to make money.
Some people picture a chunky document built purely to impress a bank. It can be that. But most of the time, it’s something far more useful: a working record you write for yourself, to think clearly about a business that currently exists mostly in your head.
A business plan isn’t only for investors either. Plenty of successful small businesses have never applied for a penny of funding and still keep one, updated, sitting in a Google Doc somewhere.
It’s a decision-making tool first. The funding pitch is just one of its jobs, not its whole purpose.
For example, take Maya. She’s a business coach offering one-on-one coaching to brand new managers—people who’ve just landed their first leadership gig and still sweat bullets before team meetings.
Her goal is simple: match her old salary in 18 months by building a following on LinkedIn, making a few HR connections, and getting clients who’ll refer her on.
None of that sounds complicated written out like that. That’s the whole point of a business plan — it takes what’s swirling around in your head and puts it on a page where you can actually interrogate it.
Why is a business plan important?
Writing a business plan isn’t glamorous.
Skip it, though, and you’re building a business on guesses instead of decisions.
Forget about grand boardrooms—good planning is about being honest:
- Is your idea actually viable, or just fun to dream about late at night?
- Who’s your real customer, not “anyone who needs X service”?
- Which competitors are out there and what are they missing?
- Exactly how much money is needed, and where does it come from?
- What are the obvious risks, and how will you sidestep them?
- What are you benchmarking against when judging future success?
It forces you to grapple with questions you might be dodging.
In Maya’s case, real planning made her see her audience wasn’t just “managers,” but specifically first-timers, about six to eighteen months into the job, working at companies that invest in training.
That little tweak completely rewrote her business plan.
What to prepare before writing your business plan
You don’t need answers to everything before you open a blank document.
But getting a few things ready first will save you hours of staring at the screen.
A clear description of your business idea
Lay out:
- What you sell
- Who you sell it to
- What problem it solves
- Why someone picks you over the alternative
Write it in plain language. If you can’t explain it to a stranger at a bus stop, simplify it further.
If you’re struggling here, it’s worth pausing to get this bit right — because everything else builds on it.
Customer research
Pull together whatever you can find, even if it’s rough:
- Conversations with existing customers
- Customer interviews or quick surveys
- Online reviews (yours and your competitors’)
- Industry forums and Facebook groups
- Search data: what people are actually typing into Google
You’re not aiming for a research paper. Even a handful of honest conversations will tell you more than rows of perfect survey data.
Competitor research
List out:
- Direct competitors doing exactly what you do
- Indirect alternatives (the DIY option, the free Facebook group, doing nothing at all)
- Their pricing and service structure
- Where they’re strong
- Where they’re leaving gaps you could fill
Basic financial information
You’ll want rough numbers for:
- What you’ll spend to start
- Your fixed monthly costs
- Prices and expected sales
- Any savings or external funds
Your personal and business goals
Get specific about what success looks like in the first 12 months, and where you want to be in three to five years.
“More clients” isn’t a goal. “12 paying clients by month six” is.
How to write a business plan step by step
These are the sections your finished plan will include. You don’t have to write them in this order — the executive summary, in particular, works best when it’s written last, once the rest of the plan actually exists.
1. Business overview and goals
This section introduces your business and gives whoever’s reading it (including future-you, six months from now) the essential context.
Introduce the basics:
- Business name and location
- Legal structure (sole trader, limited company, etc.)
- Current stage of the business
- Products or services
- Mission or purpose, in one sentence
- Short-term goals
- Where you want to be longer-term
Ask yourself:
- What exactly do you do?
- Who do you help, and what’s their problem?
- Where are you based?
- What’s on the scoreboard for year one?
- Three years out, what does “good” look like?
Make the goals specific and measurable.
“Grow steadily” tells you nothing in month eight when you’re trying to work out if you’re on track.
Maya’s example
Maya’s Coaching is an online coaching practice for first-time managers, via one-to-one sessions and small groups.
Goal for year one: 12 regular one-to-one clients, one group of eight, and £54,000 revenue.
2. Founder or team experience
This is where you show why you, specifically, can pull this off.
Cover:
- Relevant work experience
- Qualifications and training
- Industry knowledge
- Sales, marketing, or operational skills
- Your existing network
- Gaps in your skills, and how you’ll cover them: hire, outsource, or learn.
Don’t just copy your old CV. Tie your experience directly to your business plan.
Maya’s example
Eight years leading retail teams, ILM Level 5 coaching qualification, network of 40+ HR managers.
Bookkeeping outsourced from day one—she’s about people, not spreadsheets.
3. Target customer
If you haven’t really decided who you’re serving, you’re not ready.
Work out:
- Who you want as your ideal client
- Their situation or problem
- The trigger that makes them seek help
- How they try to solve it now
- Their decision-making process
- Where they look for information
- What might stop them from buying
Separate the broad market (everyone who could theoretically use your service one day) from the specific segment you’re going after first.
Trying to serve everyone usually means you serve no one well.
Maya’s target customer
A first-time manager, six to eighteen months into the role, at a company with 20–250 employees.
Struggles with delegation, difficult conversations, and the general terror of being in charge for the first time. Searches on LinkedIn and Google.
Sometimes has a personal development budget sitting unused, waiting for someone to point them toward it.
4. Market and competitor analysis
Time for proof.
This is when you show—mainly to yourself—there’s a real market.
Include:
- Market size or demand signals
- Relevant industry trends
- Shifts in customer behaviour
- Local or geographic factors, if relevant
- Direct competitors
- Indirect alternatives
- Barriers to entry
- Opportunities and threats
Look at government data, trade bodies, search trends, competitor websites, customer interviews, and industry reports. Trust your hunch, sure, but back it up with evidence.
For Europe-wide evidence, Eurostat’s business-demography data can help you explore business openings, closures and sector trends.
Competitor table example:
| Competitor | Target audience | Main offer | Price | Marketing channels | Strengths | Gaps |
| Competitor A | ||||||
| Competitor B | ||||||
| Competitor C |
Maya’s competition
Generalist business coaches, big corporate trainers, internal company programs, and generic leadership courses.
Her advantage: laser-focused on helping first-time managers, not anyone with a senior job title.
5. Services, pricing, and positioning
Lay out your offer in detail:
- Core services or products
- Packages
- Delivery format
- Pricing and payment terms
- Expected profit margin
- Future offers you’re planning
- How you stand out
Positioning should answer one question:
Why do your clients pick you instead of the next-best thing, including doing nothing at all?
Price and positioning are connected, and the cheapest option doesn’t automatically win.
A £40 introductory call and a £2,000 six-month programme can both work, for different customers solving different problems.
Maya’s offer
A six-session one-to-one coaching package, a group programme for new managers, and corporate workshops sold directly to HR teams.
Pricing reflects the depth of support, not just hours delivered.
Positioning: practical help for first-time managers, not recycled leadership theory.
6. Marketing and sales plan
This is how someone goes from never having heard of you to paying you.
Marketing gets someone to know and trust you.
Sales turns that trust into a paying client.
Map out:
- Main marketing channels
- Core message
- Content or promotional activity
- Lead generation
- What happens when someone enquires
- Sales conversations
- Follow-up
- Referrals and repeat business
- Marketing budget
- What you’ll actually measure
Find your customers where they already spend time—not just where people online say you “should” be.
Not sure where to focus your efforts?
Our guide to choosing the right social media platform for your business will help you find the channels your customers actually use.
Maya’s plan
Weekly LinkedIn content, a free guide for new managers as a lead magnet, automated follow-up emails, HR partnerships, asking for referrals with every happy client, and an online booking form.
Every step makes it easier for someone to book a discovery call.
7. Operations and delivery
Show how you’ll actually deliver on your promises:
- Location/setup
- Working hours
- Service delivery, step-by-step
- Booking and payment systems
- Suppliers
- Software and equipment
- Customer support
- Record keeping
- Legal or regulatory requirements
- How many clients you can handle
- Hiring or outsourcing plans
Be honest about capacity.
Six sessions a day feels achievable on paper until you remember you also need to prep, invoice, and eat lunch occasionally.
Maya’s setup
Home office, works three days a week, sessions over Zoom, bookings via Calendly, invoicing with a simple accounting app, and never more than 15 client hours weekly to leave room for prep, admin, and content.
8. Risk planning and backup
Don’t pretend everything will go smoothly.
Good plans face the risks head on.
Watch out for things like:
- Lower demand than expected
- Relying too heavily on one marketing channel
- Prices set too low to be sustainable
- Surprise costs
- Cash-flow gaps
- Illness or loss of capacity
- Too much revenue tied to one client
- Competitors changing tactics
- Legal or regulatory issues
For each risk that actually matters to your business, note the likelihood, the impact if it happens, the warning signs, what you’ll do to prevent it, and what you’ll do if it happens anyway.
Maya’s key risks
LinkedIn generates plenty of likes but not always enough enquiries.
Corporate sales cycles drag on longer than she’d like.
Too much revenue leans on a single HR partner.
Back-up plan: Build out new referral and lead sources by the end of Q2 instead of waiting for trouble.
9. Financial forecast and funding plan
This is the section most people put off the longest.
Fair. But the numbers only need to be based on clear assumptions, not a guess pulled from thin air.
Start-up costs
Registration fees, website, equipment, software, branding, initial marketing, insurance.
Monthly operating costs
Fixed costs, like software subscriptions and insurance, and variable costs that flex with revenue, like ad spend.
Sales forecast
Work it out as: number of customers × average purchase value × how often they buy.
Cash-flow forecast
Track when money actually lands in your account, not when you send the invoice. A profitable business can still run out of cash if payment arrives weeks after the cost does.
Profit-and-loss forecast
Revenue, minus costs, over a set period. Usually monthly for year one, then annually after that.
Break-even point
How many sales do you need before the business stops running on money out of your own pocket?
Funding requirements
If you need funding, state how much, what it’s for, where it’s coming from, and how (or whether) you’ll pay it back.
Maya’s forecast
- 12 one-to-one clients at £450 for a six-session package
- One group cohort of 8 at £600 each
- Two corporate workshops at £1,500
Software and marketing run to roughly £280 a month.
That puts her break-even point at 4 one-to-one clients a month, a number she can hit through referrals alone, before LinkedIn or partnerships even factor in.
10. Executive summary
This is the first page people read, but it’s the last thing you actually write.
Sum up:
- What the business does
- Who it serves
- What makes it different
- The business model
- Main goals
- Key financial figures
- Funding required, if relevant
Keep it to roughly one page. Anyone should be able to read just this section and understand the whole business without flipping further.
Maya’s executive summary
Maya’s Coaching supports first-time managers through one-to-one coaching, group programmes, and corporate workshops, filling a gap that generic leadership training misses.
Built on eight years of management experience and an ILM coaching qualification, the business targets £54,000 in year-one revenue with a break-even point of four monthly clients.
No external funding required. Start-up costs are covered from personal savings.
Common business plan mistakes
Writing vague goals
“Grow the business” isn’t a goal. “8 new clients by March” is.
Replace ambition with numbers and dates every time you’re tempted to write something aspirational and unmeasurable.
Assuming everyone is a potential customer
The wider you cast the net, the blander your marketing and your offer both become. A defined audience sharpens both, and makes the rest of the plan easier to write.
Making unsupported claims
“Demand is huge” needs a source behind it. Interviews, search data, competitor pricing: anything beats a hunch dressed up as fact.
Underestimating costs
Small recurring costs, tax, professional fees, and your own income needs all add up faster than the spreadsheet suggests on the first pass.
Using unrealistic sales forecasts
Base forecasts on your actual capacity, your actual prices, and how long it realistically takes to convert an enquiry into a client, not on whatever number makes the plan look most impressive.
Ignoring competitors
“I have no competitors” almost always means “I haven’t looked yet.”
Your competitors are not only businesses offering the exact same thing. They also include cheaper alternatives, DIY solutions and whatever your customer is doing instead of paying you.
If you genuinely cannot find anyone serving the same need, do not assume you have discovered a brilliant gap in the market—customers may simply be unwilling to pay for it.
Look for similar businesses that failed in the past and find out whether the problem was poor execution or a lack of real demand.
Treating each section separately
Your goals, your marketing, your capacity, and your financial forecast all have to agree with each other.
If your sales forecast assumes 20 clients but your operations section caps you at 10, one of those numbers is wrong.
Making the document too long
Every section should earn its place.
If a section doesn’t help you decide something or explain something to someone else, cut it.
Writing it once and never touching it again
A business plan is a working document, not a one-off assignment you file away and forget about until the next bank meeting. Update it when things change.
Business plan example
Here’s the shape of Maya’s finished plan, pulled together from everything above.
| Section | Summary |
| Business overview | Online coaching for first-time managers; year-one target £54,000 |
| Founder experience | 8 years management experience, ILM Level 5 coaching qualification, 40+ HR contacts |
| Target customer | First-time manager, 6–18 months in role, company with 20–250 staff |
| Market and competitors | Gap between generic leadership training and coaching built specifically for first-timers |
| Services and positioning | Six-session 1:1 package, group programme, corporate workshops |
| Marketing and sales | LinkedIn content, free guide, HR partnerships, referrals |
| Operations | Home office, Zoom delivery, capped at 15 client hours a week |
| Risks | Over-reliance on LinkedIn and one HR partner; diversifying by quarter two |
| Financial forecast | Break-even at 4 clients a month; year-one target £54,000 |
| Executive summary | One page, written last, pulling all of the above together |
Maya is launching an online coaching business for first-time managers, with a year-one revenue target of £54,000. Her goal is to help people who are six to 18 months into their first management role build confidence, delegate effectively and handle difficult conversations.
She brings eight years of management experience, an ILM Level 5 coaching qualification and an existing network of more than 40 HR contacts. That gives her both the practical experience to support clients and a strong starting point for building partnerships.
Her ideal customer is a first-time manager working for a company with 20 to 250 employees.
They are capable at their job but feel less prepared for the people side of management and want practical support rather than generic leadership theory.
Maya’s research shows a gap between broad leadership-training courses and coaching designed specifically for people in their first management role.
She will position the business as focused, practical support for the challenges new managers face during their first 18 months.
Her core offer is a six-session one-to-one coaching package. She will also run group programmes for new managers and offer corporate workshops to employers that want to support several team members at once.
To attract clients, Maya will publish useful LinkedIn content, offer a free guide for first-time managers and build referral partnerships with HR consultants. She will also ask satisfied clients for introductions and referrals rather than relying on social media alone.
The business will operate from Maya’s home office, with coaching sessions delivered through Zoom.
She will cap delivery at 15 client hours per week, leaving enough time for preparation, marketing, sales and administration.
Her main risks are becoming too dependent on LinkedIn and relying too heavily on one HR partner for referrals.
By the second quarter, she plans to diversify through additional partnerships, direct referrals and her email list.
Maya estimates that the business will break even at four clients per month once all operating costs and her required income are included. Her target is to generate £54,000 in the first year through a combination of one-to-one coaching, group programmes and corporate workshops.
Business plan FAQs
How long should a business plan be?
There's no fixed length. A simple internal plan might run 5 to 10 pages. A detailed plan built for a bank or investor often runs 15 to 30. Aim for long enough to answer the important questions, and not a page longer than that.
How often should you update a business plan?
Review it every three to six months in the early stages, then annually once things settle down. Update it immediately whenever your pricing, services, costs, funding, or target customer shifts in a meaningful way. Financial forecasts often need updating more often than the rest of the document.
What should you include in a business plan?
At minimum: an executive summary, business overview and goals, founder or team experience, target customer, market and competitor analysis, services and pricing, marketing and sales plan, operations, risks, financial forecast, and funding requirements if you need them.
How long does it take to write a business plan?
A short first draft can take a few days. A detailed, funding-ready plan can take several weeks. Most of that time goes into research, customer interviews, competitor analysis, and financial assumptions, rather than the writing itself.
Do you need a business plan if you're not looking for funding?
Yes, just a lighter version. Even without a bank or investor to impress, a business plan still helps you test the idea, set priorities, plan your marketing, forecast your cash flow, and track whether you're actually on target. Match the depth of the document to what you're using it for, not the other way round.
