Create a Business Plan (for Creative Entrepreneurs)

Why You Need a Business Plan

I’m one of those people who needs to know why I’m doing something before I do it, so I am going to break it down.

A business plan helps you figure out where you’re going, how you’ll get there, and what you’ll need along the way. The first draft is a great way to ensure you have a viable business. I like to use it to ensure the business is feasible—not down to every little detail, but just enough detail to say, “Yep! I think I’ve got something here!” And it can be a great tool to surface ideas, opportunities, and potential shortcomings of your business idea.

Here’s a real-world example: I had this idea for a neighborhood flower cart, so I started drafting my business plan. In my head, this sounded like a great idea (I still think it’s a cool idea), but as I started to get into the financials, I figured out that I would have to sell the flowers well above my competitor's prices (and a lot of them!) to make enough money for it to be worth my time. For now, I couldn’t prove the model, so I didn’t move forward.

A business plan helps you identify challenges like this early so you can figure out a solution or abort mission like I did. As your business matures, your plan will evolve and become more and more detailed. It will be a living document you’ll reference and adjust regularly (don’t worry—we’ll show you a simple process for staying in touch with your plan).

A Word of Caution

I see a lot of people who get stuck in the planning phase of launching their business. Don’t let that happen. Progress over perfection is the key here, so don’t get too hung up, on the details. We’re in MVP mode now, so keep it at that level.

Create a Simple Business Plan for Your Creative Business

A business plan can be as short as a single page or several pages long. As you’re just getting started, shorter is better, and as you gain clarity on your business and where you’re going, you can expand to add more detail. Follow these steps to create a business plan for your creative business.

Step 1: Create Your Executive Summary

This isn’t as scary as it sounds. As the name suggests, this is a summary of your business, and it includes the following elements:

• Mission Statement: what are you doing?
• Vision Statement: where are you going?
• Product summary: what will you offer your customers?
• Team description: who will work at your business?
• Industry description: what industry will you work in and what is the status?
• Competitive environment: what is the competitive landscape?
• Financial status: what financial resources will you need?
• Future plans: ideas for the future
  

Most of this will summarize your work in the following steps, so you may choose to do this part last. However, I recommend always starting with the mission and vision statement. For more guidance on writing those, be sure to check out our more in-depth guide on how to write a great mission and vision statement.

Step 2: Identify Your Audience

Your audience, your ideal client profile, your ICP, your people, and your personas. You’ll hear this referred to in many different ways, but they all mean the same thing. In this step, you’ll want to identify at least one person who would be a dream client (aka someone with the problem you’re solving that you would love to work with).

Knowing your “who” will help bring everything else in your business into focus and will help you make decisions as you move forward. Everything from marketing language to what social media channels you choose to price and everything in between will be driven by who your ideal client is. We’ll dig into this in a bigger way in the future, but for your business plan, you’ll want to define the following:

1. Demographics: age, gender, income level, education, location
2. Psychographics: values, interests, personality traits, lifestyle
3. Communication channels: where do they consume content, and how do they communicate (email, phone, etc.)
4. Pains: challenges, goals, and motivations
5. Behavioral patterns: will something trigger the need for your products or services?
   

If you’re a new business, you’ll start from scratch, but if you’ve been in business for a while, you might start with someone who has greatly benefited from your products or services (bonus if you enjoyed working with them). Defining your ideal client is a little bit data and a little bit imagination (this is where your creative brain will shine!).

Remember, the most important quality for your ideal client is to have the pain that you’re solving.

Savvy tip: Use AI to help you brainstorm. Plug in as many details as you can about your business and ask the AI tool to generate 3-4 personas that would be a good fit for your business. From there, pick and choose what makes sense for you and your business.

Step 3: Clarify Your Offerings

Here, you’ll begin to outline your products and/or services. Even if you don’t plan to have everything available out of the gate (and in most cases, we recommend you don’t do that), outline the following for each offering:

• Product name
• Features
• Price
• Cost to produce
  

We’re still keeping it pretty high-level for the purpose of this exercise. You will refine your offerings as you learn more about your audience and competition.

Step 4: SWOT Competitor Analysis

Conducting competitive analysis at this stage is really helpful if you haven’t done it already. Knowing what’s out there in the market has a lot of benefits including, confirming demand, getting a general idea of how much someone might pay for your product, and understanding how much competition you’re up against.

1. Find at least 3 other companies that offer products or services similar to yours
   1. Note, this may not be possible. Beware that if you can’t find anyone offering what you plan to, you’ll want to have some other proof of demand before proceeding
2. Research each company and document your findings
   1. Review their website
   2. Look for articles, blogs, or podcasts to learn more about them
   3. Check out their social media profiles
   4. Fill in a SWOT chart
      1. SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Step 5: Set Some Goals

Goals give you something to aim for and help set the roadmap for your business now and into the future. I recommend setting a few short-term and a few long-term goals here. Goals can be qualitative or quantitative, and having a few of them is good. Stick to big initiatives for this exercise. In another blog, we’ll show you how to break them into an actionable plan.

• Qualitative: new products, features, team members, locations
• Quantitative: financial goals, volume-based goals
  

Step 6: Map Out the Money Stuff

This may be where you cringe or get a little giddy if you’re like me. I love creating financial plans, and to really start to see if this idea is financially viable is where I start to get really excited about an idea!

These are the things you’ll need to think about:

• How much money do you need to get started?
• What are your ongoing expenses?
• How will you price your products or services?
• How much will they cost to produce or buy?
• And most importantly, how much do you need to sell to make a profit?
  

It’s not the most glamorous part, but it’s super important to see if the numbers work. This is just a guess, especially how much you think you’ll sell, but if you are offering blogging services and you see that in order to make enough profit to pay yourself you’ll need to write 250 blogs a month, you know something needs to be adjusted.

Friendly Reminder: Don’t stress if numbers aren’t your thing. There are plenty of tools and resources out there to help, and you can always get advice from a financial pro.

Step 6: Plan Your Marketing

Define your 4 P’s: product, price, promotion, place. What are you going to sell, for how much, how will you get the word out and where will you sell your products. This is where everything comes together. Marketing plans are a meaty topic, but starting to think through these things here will help you understand what it will take to get your product out into the world.

Product: the brand, its features, it packaging

Common questions:

• What needs does this product fulfill
• What frustrations does it address?
• What makes it compelling to customers that they will want to have it?
  

Price: Discounts, bundles, credit terms

Common questions:

• What is the value of the product or service to customers?
• Are there established price points for this product or service in the market?
• How will this price compare with competitors?
  

Promotion: print & broadcast ads, social media, email, search engine, video, affiliates

Common questions:

• How will you get the word out about your product or service?
• What promotional approaches are most familiar to your audience?
• What resources are available to you?
  

Place: physical stores, website, online marketplace

Common questions:

• Will it be in a physical store or online?
• Where will the stores be?
• What will be the distribution channels?
  

Marketing has changed a lot in the last decade and there are so many new ways to reach potential customers. Taking your ideal client profile into consideration during this step is crucial to ensuring you’re going to reach your people.

Step 7: Stay Flexible

Remember, your business plan isn’t set in stone. It’s okay to tweak it as you go. As a creative, you’re used to adapting and trying new things—let that flow into your business planning too. The key is to stay flexible and open to change while keeping your ultimate vision in mind.

Creating a business plan doesn’t have to be a chore. When you break it down into simple steps, it’s really just about getting clear on what you want and how you’re going to make it happen. So, grab your favorite notebook, put on some good tunes, and start planning your creative empire.

Cheering you on 🙌

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