Plan

Two things come out of this skill: one page that says what the business is, and one number that says what it costs before it pays for itself. Everything else in a traditional business plan is either decoration or a document written for a lender.

Ask which one they need. If someone else has asked for the plan, ask who — a bank wants different things from a spouse, and a spouse is usually the harder audience and the more important one.

The one page

Fill these in with them. Every section is a few sentences. If a section takes a page, the thinking is not finished.

• What it is. The sentence from idea.
• Who it is for. The specific person, and roughly how many of them exist.
• What they do today. The alternative you are actually competing with, which is usually a spreadsheet, a person, or nothing.
• Why you. What you know or can do that makes this less stupid for you than for a stranger. If the honest answer is "nothing", say so — it is survivable, but it should be known.
• How they find you. One channel, named. Not "social media".
• What they pay. A number, and what it is anchored against.
• What it costs to deliver one. Money and hours. Hours count.
• What could kill it. Three things, ranked. Be specific enough to check.

The number

This is the part people avoid, and it is the part that decides whether the business happens. Work it out with them out loud.

Start-up cost. Everything spent before the first customer pays: equipment, deposits, registration, tools, stock, the laptop. Ask what they already own and do not count it twice.

Monthly cost to exist. Subscriptions, rent, insurance, accounting, the phone. Include the things that renew annually, divided by twelve, because they will arrive.

Cost to deliver one unit. Materials, fees, payment processing, and their own time priced at something. Pricing their own time at zero is the single most common error in small-business arithmetic and it hides an unprofitable business for years.

Then compute and state plainly:

• Contribution per sale = price − cost to deliver one
• Break-even volume = monthly cost ÷ contribution per sale
• Runway = cash on hand ÷ monthly cost, if nothing sells

Say the break-even number as a sentence a person can feel: "you need eleven sales a month before this pays for itself, which is about one every three days." Then ask the only question that matters: does that sound achievable given what you learned in validation? Sit with the answer. If it does not, the fix is usually the price, not the effort.

Sensitivity, in three lines not thirty

Do not build a spreadsheet with scenarios. Say three things:

• What happens if the price is 20% lower than hoped.
• What happens if it takes twice as long to make a sale.
• What happens if the biggest single cost doubles.

If any of the three ends the business, that is the risk to manage, and it goes at the top of the page.

If a lender or investor asked for it

Then they need the long form too, and it should be assembled from the one page, never instead of it. Ask which template the institution wants; most banks publish one and it is always easier to fill in theirs than to argue with it. Add: three-year projections with the assumptions stated in words next to the numbers, the personal financial position, and what the money is specifically for.

Warn them once about projections: a hockey stick with no stated mechanism is read by every lender as a sign the applicant has not thought about it. Slow and defensible beats fast and decorative.

What to hand back

• plan.md — the one page
• numbers.md — start-up cost, monthly cost, unit cost, contribution, break-even, runway, and the three sensitivities, each with the assumption written beside it

Assumptions belong next to numbers, always. A number with no assumption cannot be corrected later, and all of these will need correcting.

Do not

• Do not produce a forty-page plan because it feels more serious. It is not.
• Do not put the total addressable market in it. Nobody starting a small business has ever been helped by a number in the billions.
• Do not price their time at zero.
• Do not let "we'll figure out pricing later" through. Pricing decides whether the business exists; run sell if it needs a proper answer.

Next

structure if money is about to change hands. offer if the thing does not exist yet. If break-even looked impossible, go back to sell and fix the price first — that is nearly always the cheaper lever.