Transcripts
1. Introduction to the class: If you are currently running
a business or you're thinking of starting one and
you need a business plan, then this Skillshare
class is for you. Knowing what to include in your business plan can be
quite a daunting exercise, but with the right guidance, it can become an easy and
enlightening process. For this class. I'm going to provide
you with a template that you can use to write
your very own business plan. I'm also going to guide you step-by-step through
the process of writing each section of your
business plan so that it becomes a meaningful document that you can refer
to in your business. In less than an hour, you will understand exactly what you need to include in
your business plan. And you finish the class with a completed business
plan that can guide your decisions for years
to come in your business. If you don't already know me. My name is Michelle
Marks and I'm a Business Growth coach
specializing in helping service-based business
owners to grow a profitable and
fulfilling business. I've been a business owner
for over 15 years now, and I've worked with
hundreds of business owners, them to reach their
business goals and build a business that
they really love. If you'd like to
learn more about me, you can go and follow
me on Instagram. It's at Michelle
Marks, business coach. You can follow me here
on Skillshare and check out some of the other
courses that I've got. Before we get started, you'll need to download
the business plan template that I have created
for you for this class. Now it's available in both
A4 and US letter size. So depending on
where you're from, you can choose the
template size that most suits what you
would normally use. So head over to the project resources section and download the relevant template and
have that ready so that you can progress through the class
along with your template. So go ahead and download
your template garden. Cutback, get comfy and
we can get started.
2. Personalise the Document: First of all, I'm
going to show you how you can customize it so that you can add your own
brand colors so that you can add your preferred
fonts and your brand fonts. And then we're going to
go through and talk about the actual content so that you can walk through
and fill that in. Once you've got
your template open, we're going to start
looking at the colors. So if you'll go to the
Design tab at the top, on the right-hand side, you'll see colors and fonts. If you haven't look at colors, click the down arrow. You can see I've got a lot
of custom fonts needed, but what you'll probably see is the range of office colors. Now, after I hover over this, you'll see that the colors
in the document will change. First of all, you can either
choose a color that is close to your brand and you can select it and
it will apply it. Otherwise, you
can, if you've got your own custom
font setup in Word, you can just cycle
through those. Otherwise, let's go ahead
and select Custom Colors. Now. They, if you click
custom colors, it will come up with
a little window here. And it's excellent Number two that we mostly want
to play with him. So if you open up
the you can see that the arrow alongside customer to, if you drop that down, we can go through, you can choose from
the standard colors. Where you can
select more colors. You use a larger selection
of standard colors, or you can choose from the
rainbow color dropper. Alternatively, it's likely that you've got some hex color codes or RGB values that you can enter in here to
get your exact color. So what I'm going
to do is I'll enter my if you enter the hex
code or the RGB values, click Okay, you'll see that
accent too has just changed. Pop that in and we'll say
shows piffle and hit Save. And you can see that right
through the document. All of the highlighted
colors have changed now to my brand color. Okay, then that's your colors. Now we can do the same
thing with the fonts. So now we're still
in a design tab. To the right-hand
side you'll see the big a with the fonts. I click down on that. And you'll see again, Office has a selection of fonts. If you're brand font
is in that selection, you can quickly choose it. So maybe if you'll
essentially school book or Times New Roman, or maybe Arial font is there. You can just go through
and change that. Otherwise you can
customize your fonts. Now the next thing that
you want to do with your business plan is come down to business name
and just pop in. Just pop in your business name and the buttons so that it is, it is yours, of course. Now, in the date, the date is an automatic field. So if you just, if
you click onto it, hover over it,
click publish date, drop-down menu can either choose today or you can
select a different date. I'm going to choose today. And now up here, we want to pop and logo in a business logo because it's
nice to have that visual. So just select that
text box and delete it. Cut it out. And now what you wanna
do is hover over into the top menu where
it says insert, hovering the pictures click
down and insert picture from this two-by-two property name. And depending on the file size, you will need to re-size it. I suggest you use
if you click on it, if you can't see
those resizing boxes, just click on your image and
you can see the circles, the dots at each corner. If you just hover over one of the corners and you
can see the two arrows. Now that's an
indicator that if you click and hold, you can re-size. Now when you insert that, You're not going to be
able to move it very far. You can see I'm
trying to move it. The first thing you want to
do is hover over the image, click the image and then
you can see this button, this layer options button. Click on that and select
behind or in front of text. Once that's clipped and
you can then left-click on hold to move this
to wherever you live. That's got your logo, it's now gotten your business
name and we can continue.
3. Write Your Mission, Vision and Values: Now that you've customized it, we want to work through completing the actual
business plan. Now the Table of Contents will
automatically update that. Well, it's a two click Update, but we want to leave
that until we've finished the rest
of the document. Now on the first page
you'll have your outline, your mission statement, and
an extension of your mission. Your outline, unless you're
really clear on what own, creating an outline
for your business, you may not be sure yet what you're
going to put him here. So if you want to, you can leave this
question for last. We can look at the
mission section now split up into two
different sections. The first one, the
mission statement, is a very brief outline of
what your business mission is. Your mission extension is, if you would like to
elaborate on that mission, you've got both options fan. However, if you would just
prefer one or the other, then that's entirely up to you. To complete your
mission statement. Your mission is what you
do and why you do it. It's why you exist in business. And it's helpful
if you start with my mission is Our mission
is or your business names, mission needs, then you can explain what it is you're in
business for who you help, how you help them, and why you do it. In the mission statement, keep it nice and succinct. It may be one or two sentences
kept nice and short. If you're a bit
of a storyteller. That's why the
mission extension, the extension of
your mission exists, is because this way you
can elaborate and really bring some depth into
your mission and your y. So when you're completing
your mission extension, you can perhaps
start with talking about how you got into business, why you decided to start your business
and do what you do. Maybe there's a backstory behind what drove you to
start your business. Maybe you saw a really, really good need in
the industry for people needing your services
and your mission extension. This is where you want
to share that story. This section can be as long
or as short as you like. If your mission is three
pages long, That's fine. You've got a succinct version that you can refer to later. So why don't you pause the video now and start brainstorming the information that
is going to go into your mission statement and your extension if you
would like to use it. Okay, now you've completed
your mission statement, we're going to walk
through to your vision. Now. Mission and vision can be
a little bit confusing, but what do you
want to think of is your mission is what you do. Now. Your vision
is where you are going in the future or what you want your business to
look like in future. So again, we've got a short vision statement and we've got a
vision extension. You don't need both of them, but you can have the
mirror if you like. Your vision statement is a nice succinct
sentence to sentence or paragraph that outlines what you are striving for
where you want your B, your business to be at
some point in the future. Now, some people struggled to look ahead and see
what they're creating. So I encourage you just to
look as far as you can. Okay? Now, a little tip that I've got for
you is perhaps too, to start with your
extension of your vision. Because this way you
can brainstorm all of the little bits and pieces that can make up your vision and
why you want to do something. You can see that there's
a couple of prompts here. They can get you thinking
about what your vision is. So you'll have a general idea of where you're trying
to go with your vision. You'll have a vision for what your business
looks like for you, What kind of lifestyle
you want to live. Alongside your business. You'll have a vision for what
your clients you work with. You'll have a vision for how
you want them to see you. You'll have a vision
for the kind of thing, hey, team that you
are looking towards, no matter how large or
small that Taney's, you will have a vision for what you want
that to look like. You'll have a vision for
your leadership style. You'll have a vision for
the kind of impact that you want to make on your family, on your clients,
on your industry, on the local area economy. You may have a vision for the impact you want
to make on the world. This is where you
want to brainstorm that you'll have a vision for what you want
for your marketing. Any other sectors
of your business, you can include it in here. Now, why don't you
start with a list of what you want and
what you don't want. This is a great place to start when it comes
to your vision. In your list of things
that you do want that could be marketing
with integrity, that could be to be
known by your clients as being really reliable and having awesome
customer service. It could be that
you want to make a really positive impact
on the whole industry. These are the things
that you want. Now in your I don't want list. This list indicates to you
what you're not happy with. Whatever is on your
not want list, you are going to purposefully
do the opposite. If whatever you write
on your not want list, see how you can
transform that into a positive statement that relates to where you want your
business to be in future. Once you've done
your brainstorming, you can turn that into the
extension of your vision. Maybe that looks like
lots of paragraphs, maybe that looks
like dot points. However you need to write this out is what you are going to do. Once you've looked at, once you've done
that brainstorming, once you've flesh that out, then you can succinctly
capture that in a couple of sentences or a paragraph
for your vision statement. So go ahead and pause the video and start
your brainstorm. So now we're going to move
onto your business value. Ideally, we have five
to ten core values. And these are things that are going to mean
something to you. These are what you are going to run that fits what you live your life by its once
you've run your business by it's what you've
learnt in your clients, what your clients want from you. These values, things that you adhere to because they're
important to you. So there could be things
like transparency, it could be excellent
communication. It could be making things fun. It could be sustainability
and being eco-friendly, whatever your
business values are, things that you'll
probably hold important to you as an individual, but also what you want. It's, it's part of your legacy, I suppose as, as your business. So think about
five to ten values that you can include in
your business value. You've got two columns here. In the, in the value column, this is where you
can use one word. So let's go with eco-friendly. Let's say, let's say
that's one of our values. It's one of my values. Certainly things
should be eco-friendly and it's not enough to
just want one value. We really want to
capture why that is L value and what action
we are going to on that. So if my business
value is eco-friendly, I'm going to outline that and elaborate that a
little bit here. The thing that our value is
being eco-friendly and the, the actual, the actual action
I'm going to type with that is that I want to minimize my carbon footprint while
running my business. So I can make
decisions like that. The paper that I use is going
to be carbon-neutral paper, or we're going to take
our business and make it paperless so that we're not getting
paper in the mount, we're not using paper, we're not printing
paper and using it. But also things like if we
go out for coffee meetings, well, we go to
networking events. We're not going to use the
single use paper cups. We're going to bring our key. You can see how your
business value is influencing your decision and the way that you
run your business. So take some time now to fill
out your business values. Maybe you're already aware of some or maybe you
need to come back later and do some research and see what other
people's values are. Before you commit to what values you want
on your business plan.
4. Define your Services, Pricing and Budget: Okay. So let's go through and
look at your services now. Your services are also
going to include, say, if you have digital
products as well, or maybe you're filling this
out in your product base or e-commerce business now
you can adapt that for them. Let's look at your services. Think about what pricing method, what pricing strategy are you going to use in your business? Do you offer services and you'd like to price at an hourly rate? Or would you like to
incorporate, retain it? You going to form packages
from your services. Just think about how you
are going to arrive at your price for your services or how are you going to
come up with your rate? And just think about why
you choose this method. I really want you to think
about that because let's take, for instance, a virtual
assistant who starts a business. Now when you come into the
virtual assistant industry or pretty much any
service-based industry, you think about an hourly rate because that's all you know. You're anybody else in the
virtual system industry. Maybe you've only ever seen people charging
an hourly rate. Maybe that's what you're
used to as an employee. As an employee, you are
getting paid an hourly rate. If that's all you know, then this prompt will get you to think about why
you're choosing that method. If your answer is one on pricing at an hourly rate
because that's all I know. Maybe that's an indicator that at some point in future that might change to an alternative
pricing methods. So you could write down
here that to start with, I'm going to price
and an hourly rate. And we will transition
to a new pricing method. Once I'd re-evaluated six months down the track,
something like that. But if you know, if
you're going to use another pricing
method and you know exactly why you're using it, then just outline it
here so that it is in your business plan
with your core services, map out what those services actually are so that you know what you do and don't offer. You may have just
one main service or you could have multiple. You can have a whole menu of services that
you need to offer. So if, if that's the case, and that can certainly be true for, say, graphic designers. It could be for web designers, it could be for copywriters
and virtual assistants. They could all have a lot
of different services. Or some may just have
a small handful. Now if you need to
create a service menu and you want to list all of your services or
digital products, then feel free to
add extra color, extra rows to this table. And there's a couple of
ways you can do that. If you click in a table, right-click and
insert rows below. You can tab through
and add rows. Or if you hover over the line, you can see the plus
button then plus button, we'll add rows for you. So add as many rows as you need. And don't look at other
businesses for this because you will have as many or as few services as
relevant to your business. So write your service or
product down, include detail. It doesn't have to
be too in-depth, but it's a good
indicator to remind you what that service encompasses,
what it includes. And it's also helpful to include a price for each of
those services as well. Now, if you have a lot of services and you want
to package them, you don't want to
charge an hourly rate, then this is helpful in
generating your quotes. If you've got a
client that says, I want this, this and that, you can look at your
service menu and just pull the prices from there, makes it so much easier. Otherwise, if you have an alley, right, maybe you have
retainer packages, so you'll have a retainer
package or a two-hour retainer, five-hour tiny fifth
thing I retainer. Maybe you have different
pricing tiers for those. So just include them in
your services in a way that is that you can
understand them. Now in this table, in the core services table, these are the services
that you offer, but they may also be additional revenue sources
inside your business. So if you've got
additional revenue streams like that that you
want to include. There's a couple of examples of my additional revenue streams. So I use affiliate marketing, so I do an affiliate income. I also have some courses that I have available
on Skillshare. So when people watch my
courses on Skillshare, skillshare pays me
a fee for that, but it's not something
that I actively promote. But those are what I consider
additional revenue streams. If you have, say, investments, maybe you've got a business
account that is any interests than the interests would be
classed as revenue as well. Okay, while we are on the
subject of numbers and finance, let's work through your budget. Your business budget is going to look like it's going to
paint a bit of a picture of the income that you earn versus the
expenses that you pay. So this can give you really good idea of how
profitable your businesses. So what we can do for
this section is do an anticipated budget of what you would like
to be earning. You can also do these
with what you're currently earning and
adapted as you grow. In the first section, just include the various
income that you receive. And there's a couple of
ways you can do this. You can either do this. Say service income. Could be service income, which might be an hourly rate. Let's say that you
are $65 an hour. And let's say you do ten hours. So let's just say that for
every ten hours, $650. Maybe you want to do this by client number one,
client number two. Or maybe you want to do this
as logo design packages. Maybe the next one
is Todd packages, and maybe you sell some
digital templates. However you would like
to break this down. It's good if you can break it down in a way that helps you see which services or digital products you are
selling the most of, so that you know where
to focus your efforts. So once you've entered in
all of your income sources, then you can enter your total monthly income
under total monthly income. And we also want to do all
of your expenses as well. So your expense
items are going to be things like software costs. There'll be business insurance, It'll be memberships
that you're part of. It could be professional fees like your accountant
or bookkeeper. It could be trading in education for courses
that you buy, all the expenses,
everything that you pay to run your business. You want to then sum up
what they would cost you on average each month to look at your total
monthly expenses. Now, your estimated profit
or loss is going to be your total monthly income minus your total
monthly expenses. If you end up with a
negative figure here, that means that you are
running your business at a loss and something
needs to change. If it is in the positive, then you know that
your business, if it follows this budget, you know that it is profitable, but you can still
make some changes. But at the end of the day, what matters is that you've got an accurate picture of what
your business is bringing in and out each month
so that you can make decisions on
how to change that.
5. Define your Marketing Plan: Now let's look at
your marketing. So once you've completed
the budget and finance, we move on to the marketing. In the first section, describe what your target
audience looks like. So you may have a
set type of person, demographic, or industry that
you are targeting, right? A bit of a description
there of as in-depth as possible on who your
target audience is. After that, you
want to enter what your target audience is challenged by what
their pain points are. Because if you understand
what they are challenged with your services are going
to help them fix that. So it's important in
your business that you understand what
they are challenged with in relation to
the services that you offer so that you can help them. So describe, in this section, describe what your clients
are going through, what they struggle with, and how you can help
them with your services. Your unique selling
point is going to be the thing or things
you can have multiple, that makes you stand
out from other people. Now, a comment challenge
that people have is that you are running a
business in a saturated market, okay, So think bookkeepers
speak virtual assistance. Think social media managers,
think graphic designers. There are so many in the world, There's so many in Australia. But that doesn't mean that your business is
not going to succeed. What that means is that there's going to be something
or some things about you and your business that makes you stand out
to your ideal client. So thinking about
those sort of things, it could be that you have high experience in a
particular industry. It could be that there is
a certain style or way you do things that
people absolutely love. It could be something about your personality that
really stands out. There are so many reasons why you could stand
out to other people. And I want you to
list them all a k as many reasons as possible. That would make you stand
out or that would make somebody choose you
over somebody else. I want you to write
them down here. Now think about how
your clients find you. If you, if you're already an existing existing
business and you have clients that you can
look to for information. Then think about the
clients that you've got and look back at
how they found you. Where did where did
you first meet them? What made them engage in your services or what made
them connect with you, what made them by your staff. Just think about
where they came from. And the reason that's
really helpful is because you want to do
more of that, okay? You want to do more of what works and less of what doesn't. So if you're a new business or you haven't got as many clients, you can't pull a lot of data. Then just think about where your ideal client or your
target audience is likely to find you on the type of business that
people search for, like a graphic designer, a lot of people know is that a graphic designer is
somebody who designs logos. People know that a web
designer is somebody who designed websites,
especially for businesses. So a commonly known industry where people would Google for you with where they
would search for you? Or is it that they don't really understand the industry or they're not familiar
with the industry. I'm looking at you
virtual assistants. Because often people
don't realize that these industry exists until
they meet someone in it. So are you the kind of business where they stumble upon you on social media and then see
that your digital products, that they see how
awesome they are and they need it just
because they've seen it? Or is it that they've met
you at a networking event? They learn what you
do and they're like, Oh my God, I needed that. I'm going to follow you. Think about that journey and how your clients are going to find you so that
you can be there, so that you can do the things that are
going to attract them. Now, let's think about
your marketing methods now that we know where your clients are
going to find you, where they're going, whether they're going to search for you, whether they're going to stumble upon you on social media, whether they're gonna meet
you at a networking event. Now that you know, you have that
information map down, I want you to make
some decisions on what marketing channels you
are going to be present on, where you are going to put
your efforts so that you can maximize your ability to lead your clients
through that journey. So if your clients
are going to stumble on across you on social media, you need to be on social media. If people, if you'd
like to meet people at networking events and you
find that's the way that you gained most
of your business. You need to be at
networking events. That's going to be the channel
that you are going to use. So what do you want to do
in this table is to outline the marketing channel
or the method you are going to use to
connect with clients. Want you to write
the name of it and describe how you are going
to use that channel. Okay, so let's say, let's say, I'm sorry, I'm going
to networking events. I'd like to attend a lot of networking events because
I'm a people person. I like to meet people in person. Okay, so now attending
networking events, how am I going to use
this marketing channel? If networking is something
that I want to do, then I'm going to
use that channel to meet and connect with
local business owners. If you're using social
media and you want to use that to educate people, then how you're going to use it? Well, your strategy is
that you are going to be sharing helpful and
educational content. That's going to teach people
something, give them value, but also build trust by sharing your credibility
and your knowledge. So just go through and identify all the
marketing channels that you are going to use and how
you are going to use them.
6. Explore Peer Analysis and Your Team: In this section of your,
of your marketing, we're going to look at other
similar businesses, okay, Now I don't call them competitors
because often many of us can work in unison with
other people in our industry. So the virtual
assistant industry is an extremely
collaborative industry. So I call them industry peers
rather than competitors. But what we want to look at is no other peers that are doing similar things
that you are doing. And I want you to identify what's different
about them, okay, So if you're a virtual
assistant and you have got a couple of other
virtual assistants who have a similar area that you
use specializing say you both work with sada or you
both systems and processes, or you both manage
email and calendar. So think about other businesses. It is similar to you, right there,
business names down. Look at their target audience. Are they similar or
different to you? And identify how
they are different? Because what you
are going to use that information for is in terms of your strengths
and weaknesses. If they do something that is amazing in one area
of the business, say they're amazing with one particular piece of
software, but you are not. That is their strength that they are going to capitalize on, but you want to look to your own strengths and
capitalize on those. Make use of your own strengths for your clients and
for your business. So that's why it's
helpful to look at others to see
what they're doing, see where they're strong, and see if you can
identify any gaps or areas that if you see strengths with someone else or weaknesses
with someone else, maybe it's your string. And you can, you can do that. Just look around and do some
industry peer analysis. Now let's look at
your strengths and weaknesses, opportunities
and threats. You may know this
as swat analysis. So think about your strengths. First of all, what
do you do really, really well, that you can do more of what's
working well for you. It's a great exercise to
do this on reflection because a lot of the things that we learn is done on reflections. So what strengths do you have? Do you have a, you really good if you're a
designer or you really, really good at one
particular style of design. Maybe if you are a
virtual assistant, maybe there's a particular area of let me have a service that you are
really, really good at. Maybe this becomes your core
service or your signature, and you can charge
a premium for it. Those things are strengths
that you can capitalize on. Likewise, your weaknesses,
you want to look at your weaknesses not to identify
where you are failing. That is not the point
of this exercise. The point is the
exercise in looking at your weaknesses is to
identify way you can make. I don't know if you
can hear my son, he's laughing at something. But you can look
at your weaknesses to see what's not working and you can make some
decisions from there. Are you going to you're going to outsource to somebody
who has that strength. Is there a gap
that you can feel? Or is it something that you
will just acknowledge that is not one of your strengths and you will leave it
to somebody else, leave it to one of
your industry peers. And you will focus your
efforts elsewhere. Looking at your weaknesses
is not to point them out, but it's to show
you what gaps you can feel and what decisions
you need to make. Your strengths and weaknesses. Looking at you internally as
a person and as a business. Opportunities and threats
are things where we start, we finished looking
inwards and we start to look outward at the economy, at our clients, see what opportunities and
threats are out there. So opportunities, are
there good things happening in the industry
that you can capitalize on? Things like with such a growth in people working from home, there are people who are more, they have more open
to remote workers. So maybe you can start reaching a new audience
or maybe you can start increasing something
in your business as a result of that, maybe there are some
opportunities in the industry. Maybe somebody has
opened up a new, a new yearly event
for the industry that you can make the most often
get your name out there. Maybe there's trends in social media that are really
suitable for your business. Maybe TikTok is something
that's suitable. It's not suitable for mothers. I don't really wanna
do it, but if you see a social media channel
that is really on the rise and people of
jumping on that bandwagon, maybe you can use that as an opportunity
in your business to reach more people on the
other side of that other, any threats that you are
facing at the moment. Right now, there's
talk that we're in a bit of a recession now. The threats that you, that you are facing so that you can identify how you are
going to work through those, how you are going to. Keep a sustainable business
in spite of those threats. So pause the video, spend some time looking
at your SWOT analysis, your strengths and
your weaknesses internally and external
opportunities and threats. Okay, We're on the home stretch now you are doing so well. Let's start looking at what your team looks like
from where you are now. You may not have any team in your business and it may
not even be on the horizon. But alternatively, you could
already have existing team or you could know that this is what you want
in your business. Maybe you are looking at
developing an agency so you know what team you
want to have in place. In this section of
your business plan. This is where we really
want to map this out. So I want you to look
at all of the people that contribute to the business in some way, shape, or form. And I want you to map out what their roles and
responsibilities are. Obviously, you're going to
start with you as the owner. Wrong channel, your
name is obviously not. Oh no, let's say
Michelle minutes, Iona and business coach. My responsibilities
are coaching clients, it's marketing, its
finances, it's all the hair. Maybe, maybe that's what
your business look like. Maybe you're wearing all
the hats at the moment. However, maybe in the future, you might want to include
new staff members. Maybe one day you want to have someone to take care
of your marketing for you. Maybe you want someone
to take care of your administration,
your design, your website management,
your what else is it? Maybe maybe you
want a cleaner to help you in your house
that's on my list, is to get acquainted
back so that I can spend less time cleaning,
more time on my business. So what that could
look like for you is you'll put
yourself as the INR and then I'll put my my
executive assistant. She's my boss really,
she dug everything. My my executive assistant clear and most from
pen and paper girl, she she's basically
what keeps me sane and organized because she takes care of my calendars, my she helps me with my email. She'll tapped me on
the shoulder when I haven't done things
and she'll do so many things in the backend. Honestly, I wouldn't be where
I am today without clear. So maybe you want that person for yourself
as well as well. Maybe instead of permanent staff or contract is
maybe here you want to write future team
and this is what you are aiming towards. Okay? So these are people, they
could either be staff as employers or sorry, as employees, or maybe
they are contractors. Maybe you've got
your own assistant, maybe you've got consultants
that work with you. Maybe you've got subcontractors. Maybe you could
look like anything, but whoever is in your team, you want to include them here in this section that
has additional support. These are people that
are probably I'm sorry, I can't I can't I can't edit out those giggles because
why would we but additional support
in in your business could look like things
like your business coach, he may not work with
them all the time. But when you get stuck
in your business, you may be like, Oh my God, I need a session with Michelle. Or maybe you have
somebody that you look to or maybe you have somebody to look to for
IT support if things go wrong in your,
on your computers. Maybe if you're a
graphic designer, you had trade printers or you have web designers
that you refer to. Anything that includes
part of your team and your support structure for your business is what you want to include in this section.
7. Finalise your Plan and Table Contents: Can you done so well and he's
been in this business plan. Now, if you haven't already, it would be a good time
to go through and insert an outline of what
your business is. Just outline just to do a bit of a summary of your business. Maybe it could be like on
a virtual assistant that provides system and process
audits and shut up. And I work with certain type people that's
hard to do that on the fly. But just outline,
you'll business. The last thing that
you want to do is come up to your
table of contents. And we want to
update your table of contents because as
you've added information, the headings may have changed. The page numbers
may have changed. So we just want you to
table of contents to reflect that what you wanna
do is hover over your pet, your table of contents so you
can see that it turns gray. Click on that, and you can see that it brings
up an update table. I'm losing my words.
You can see it brings up an Update
Table button. You click on Update Table, and it brings up an
option either you can update the
page numbers only, which if you haven't made any
changes to your headings, this is probably all you need. Well, you can update
the entire table if you added headings, if you change pages and
everything like that, click Okay, and it's just going
to update everything, makes sure all the page numbers are relevant to the
right headings. Well done on completing
your business plan. That's really, really awesome. Now, your business plan
can be changeable. If you review it six
months down the track, things have changed,
then so be it. This is a working
document for you to refer to so that you are not always pulling all
this information from your head at any given moment.
8. Your Project: Well done. You've done so well
to get through this class. Thank you so much for
sitting through all of it. It really was a privilege to
teach this process with you. By now. I hope you've got
a lot more clarity and understanding about what goes into your business plan, but also the ins and outs
of your own business. Now this business
plan is going to guide a lot of your
decisions in business. It's going to help
keep you on track. It's going to help
you understand what strategies you need to use, who your ideal client is, what services you provide, and your pricing method, and a lots of other
different things to do with a growing
your business. Now this is a working document. We're not going to just create this plan and then
just leave it. It's a working document
that's going to evolve as your business evolves. So save it somewhere handy
that you can refer to. Now for the class, there was a project. Your project was to share certain sections of
your business plan. You are welcome to share any section that you would
like if your business plan. But as a minimum, I would love for you to
share one of two things. Either take a screenshot of
your completed business plan, cover because I would
love to see how you have brought your brand
into the document. I would also love for you to share your mission statement, the mission part of
your business plan, because that shows that you have a very clear understanding
of why you're in business, what it is that you
are setting out to do. So go ahead and take
a screenshot of the relevant sections
of your business plan and upload it as a project. Inside of this class. Please remember, I
recommend you do not share any
personal information or financial information because other people can
see the project. And I would rather keep that
information to yourself. Once again, thank you so much for joining me for
this Skillshare class. If you'd like, you can head over to my profile and you can see the other classes that I'm teaching here on Skillshare. Otherwise, you have thousands of other amazing classes that
you can see on Skillshare. Thank you again and
I'll see you next time.
Michelle Marks, Surface Pattern Designer
