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• 30-60-90 Day Plan Template &...

30-60-90 Day Plan Template & Guide [+ Free PowerPoint & Excel Download]

30% of new employees quit within the first 90 days on the job. Creating a 30-60-90 day plan helps engage your new hires from the very start, setting them up for long-term success in record time.

What is a 30-60-90 day plan?

HR’s role in the 30-60-90 day plan

• Helping employees visualize how they align their work and goals to the business and connect day-to-day tasks to the larger purpose of work
• Working with managers and employees to create a clearly defined plan based on specific and measurable goals
• Regularly checking that the plan is being followed and key metrics are being achieved.

Benefits of a 30-60-90 day plan

For organizations.

• Better alignment : A structured 30-60-90 day plan ensures that the employee understands how their work contributes to shared objectives and the company’s strategic goals. This clarity encourages collaboration and helps team members work together more effectively toward common goals.
• Improved onboarding : Creating a smoother and more structured onboarding process with a clear plan reduces the time it takes for new hires to become productive contributors.
• Early identification of issues : By tracking an employee’s progress through the 30-60-90 day onboarding plan, managers can identify potential challenges or skill gaps early and enable timely interventions and support to keep the employee on track.

For employees

• Clear expectations : A 30-60-90 day plan provides employees with a clear understanding of what is expected of them in their new role, reducing uncertainty and anxiety.
• Goal-oriented progress : Employees work to achieve specific, measurable goals, which boosts their confidence and motivation as they see tangible progress.
• Accelerated learning and integration : A clear plan encourages rapid learning and adaptation to the new role, helping employees integrate more quickly and effectively into the team and company culture.

Types of 30-60-90 day plans

30-60-90 day onboarding plan for new employees.

• Clarifying the role of new employees, ensuring they understand their responsibilities and deliverables
• Providing valuable insights through discussions with new hires, giving managers a better understanding of their skills and abilities, as well as what they know about the business
• Facilitating the building of relationships with new hires through regular communication and check-ins
• Helping new employees manage their time effectively by providing focus and direction for their tasks during their first 90 days.

Learn how to effectively onboard new hires

The 30-60-90 day plan for an interview.

The 30-60-90 day plan for internal promotions

• Setting clear expectations aligned with high-level objectives
• Alleviating new job jitters by clearly reminding employees of priorities, empowering employees to self-manage their work, and supporting goal setting.

HR pro tip Adjusting the 30-60-90 plan for internal promotions is an excellent way to highlight and encourage the behavior that earned the employee their promotion in the first place. Work with them to outline their skills and the value they bring to their team, department, and the business, and then align these with their short- and long-term goals.

30-60-90 day plan examples

1. 30-60-90 day sales plan example.

2. 30-60-90 day plan for managers example

3. 30-60-90 day plan for executives example

4. 30-60-90 day plan for an internal promotion example

How to write a 30-60-90 day plan for new employees

Checklist: 30-60-90 day plan for new employees .

• New employee welcome
• Planning get-to-know meetings
• Clarifying short and long-term priorities
• Creating SMART goals
• 30-day goals
• 60-day goals
• 90-day goals
• Defining metrics of success
• Feedback and review checkpoints

1. New employee welcome

The welcome should include:.

• Role details
• How the role supports the broader organization’s objectives
• A summary of expectations and the support the employee should expect from their manager.

HR pro tip Personalize the welcome to the employee, their role, and how they will add value to the business, clients and colleagues. This will set the stage for a memorable onboarding experience.

2. ‘Get to know’ meetings

The ‘get to know’ section should include:.

• Who the employee is meeting, including their name, role, and responsibilities
• The key objective of the meeting
• Why this meeting will help the employee in their new role
• What topics should be discussed and suggested questions that the employee can ask to gain the most they can from the meeting.

3. Outlining high-level goals

The long-term goals section should include:.

• A list of outcomes-based goals to be achieved in 30, 60, and 90 days
• Context around how this goal relates to their position. For example: As a sales executive in this organization, one of your roles is onboarding new clients.
• A clear understanding that the employee should be aiming for fluency in their role by the 90-day mark and that this plan will help them achieve this goal.

HR pro tip Align long-term priorities to the organization’s key strategic goals. From there, work backwards to determine where the employee should be at the end of their first 90 days to be best positioned to support those priorities and which short-term goals need to be achieved within 30 and 60 days support key outcomes at the end of 90 days.

SMART goals

• Time-bound.
• Work with the new employee and their manager to define between three and five goals.
• Encourage the employee to learn as much as they can and to suggest which goals they believe they need to reach.
• Highlight that the employee is not working in a vacuum – they should be encouraged to ask questions, learn.
• It is important not to overwhelm the employee as this plan is formulated as the new hire arrives.
• Work with the employee and their manager to extend their roadmap, but make it clear that they are not expected to be able to meet these goals as they start their role.
• Ensure the employee understands this is the last month before they are expected to fully transition into their role.
• Set goals and expectations that can be used as the basis for the first performance contracting conversation.
• Allow the employee to also state what support they need during this last month to be able to fully transition into their role.

HR pro tip The third month is when the strategy mapped out during days 31 – 60 is executed. By this phase, the employee must be actively contributing to projects and working with their team to achieve results. Key metrics must reflect this.

4. Defining metrics of success

5. feedback and review checkpoints, hr’s role.

• The employee to give feedback
• The manager/leadership team to give feedback
• Metrics to be reviewed against goals
• Planning around additional support if metrics have been missed.

HR pro tip To support both managers and new employees in this journey, you can create a short template that helps them to document what was covered in the meeting, including a recap of goals, metrics, what was achieved and any key outcomes or learnings.

Free 30-60-90 day plan templates

30-60-90 day plan template: powerpoint.

30-60-90 day plan template: Excel

Nadine von Moltke

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What's a 30-60-90 Plan for Managers? + Template

Lorraine Roberte

You just became a manager and are excited about the new opportunities (and salary bump) that await you. 

But underneath the excitement is often an undercurrent of anxiety and uncertainty. Will you be able to  manage your team well ? What does the boss expect of you? How will you know if you're doing a good job in this new position? 

For many, the answer is a 30-60-90 plan. It's a guide detailing the goals and tasks you'll accomplish over the first three months on the job. 

Let's look at an example plan you can use and do a deep dive into this valuable tool for managers. That way, you can hit the ground running.

What Exactly is a 30-60-90-Day Plan for Directors and Managers?

A 30-60-90 plan for directors and managers is a roadmap of the goals and actions they'll focus on during their first 30, 60, and 90 days on the job.

The framework for the 30-60-90-day plan is the same whether you're a director, employee, or hold another role—only its content changes to reflect your position.

While a higher-up can create this plan, they'll likely ask new hires to do it as part of the  onboarding process . They'll then review it and approve it. This avoids micromanaging and empowers managers to take charge of their position. 

Download the 30-60-90-Day Plan Template

Here's a 30-60-90-day plan example that you can use as a template . Just click "Make a copy: to download your own.

The template includes the following:

30-60-90-Day Plan

Name: ________________ 

Job title: _______________

Department: ______________

Supervisor: _______________

Company Mission

The core belief that guides everything your company does. Make sure your plan helps further your company’s vision. 

30 Days: Develop a Strong Foundation

This first month in your manager role is about getting as much information as possible about the new company and the people you work with. You also want to establish yourself as an  effective leader.

Start date: ________

End date: _________

Main result:  Integrate into the company and develop a rapport with the team.

• Become familiar with the  company culture , people in it, and products or services sold 
• Get to know the new team and their strengths
• Build relationships with key stakeholders
• Understand the managerial role as part of the company's bigger objectives
• Understand the details and nuances of the position
• Schedule one-on-one meetings with every  direct report  
• Create a reference file with every direct report's position, strengths, and job responsibilities
• Introduce yourself to key stakeholders
• Read through company material on products and services

60 Days: Lay the Groundwork

The second month is when you'll dive deeper into the company, departments, and your team. You'll gain a deep understanding of how things are done before working on improving the processes. 

Main result:  Implement and improve on existing processes and systems

• Understand the company's current best practices and procedures in your department
• Explore current challenges in your department
• Improve on existing procedures
• Create a shared document of current processes for key activities and share it with the team to make it easy for them to be contributors
• Review and update the shared document with ideas on improving best practices and procedures
• Create a plan with solutions to one or more problems the department faces

90 Days: Lift Off

In the third month, you take everything you've learned and all the procedures you and your team honed and put it to the test with a small project.

Main result:  Successfully deliver on project objectives

• Create a manageable plan to succeed on a project
• Learn to collaborate as a team
• Hold a meeting for project kickoff
• Create a roadmap with milestones for the project
• Delegate work to each team member
• Re-evaluate procedures and processes

What Are the Key Elements of a 30-60-90 Plan?

A 30-60-90 plan should include the goals and tasks you want to accomplish every 30 days. Below is a closer look at our plan to help you customize yours. 

Company Mission 

Your company's mission statement is the core belief that guides everything they do, so it should also be the guiding voice in all your actions. Having the statement in full at the top makes it easy to check that your plan fits within your business's vision. 

Start and End Dates for Each Period

You likely won't start your new role on the first of the month. Marking when each 30-day period begins and closes makes it easier to track your progress as you move toward the finish line. 

Main Result

This is the big-picture objective you want to accomplish within 30 days. You'll break it down further when listing your goals, but this should be a one-sentence summary of what you want to achieve. 

Your first 90 days at the new job are about developing the foundation you need to be successful in the coming months and years. It's not a time for lofty objectives and aggressive targets. Instead, set goals that'll help you reach your main result. 

If you want to break down the goals section further, you can categorize them as personal, learning, and performance goals. Here's more about them:

• Personal goals  help you grow your social-emotional and practical skills, like learning to give and take feedback well or doing better with  time management .
• Learning goals  relate to deepening your knowledge about the industry or company, like reviewing code books or other resources in your industry. It could also be learning new skills, such as software that your team uses. 
• Performance goals  are the results you want to reach, such as reducing the time it takes to set up new jobs in AutoCAD by 25%.

What you want to accomplish during each 30-day set should be clearer than glass. That way, you and your hiring manager can confirm if you're on target and if adjustments need to be made. Use the SMART goal framework (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound) to create tasks and metrics that can be checked off. 

3 Tips for Making a 30-60-90-Day Plan for Managers

1. ask your supervisor for guidance.

Just because you're making the plan doesn't mean you have to think of everything yourself. Don't be afraid to reach out to your manager about priorities, challenges and initiatives they'd like your help with, and the things to know about the company culture and existing systems. 

Once you're done with your plan, your supervisor will likely want to take a look and approve it. Ask for feedback and edit your 30-60-90-day plan accordingly. 

2. Use Your 30-60-90-Day Plan as a Guide, Not a Rule Book

As you learn the ropes of the new job, get to know people, and familiarize yourself with the company, you may have to tweak your plan to account for the new information you learn. That's okay and is to be expected. 

3. Keep the Language Simple

You want your 30-60-90 plan to be straightforward and practical. While you may have made good use of a thesaurus to bolster your accomplishments on your resume, you don't need to do that for your plan.

That way, you can quickly and easily understand it. So, just focus on concretely showing what you plan to accomplish during the next three months. 

How To Use a 30-60-90-Day Plan for Managers in an Interview

You can write a 30-60-90 plan after you get the job, but did you know you can wow potential employers by creating one  beforehand ? 

Having one ready to go during the  interview process  speaks volumes about your interest in working with the company. It also shows you understand the role and take it seriously. 

You can use the template above for your plan and customize it for the position. While you won't be able to ask your supervisor for guidance, you can use the job ad as your reference to create your goals and tasks. 

For example, as a construction project manager, your  job description  might ask that you interact with architects, inspectors, engineers, clients, and other personnel.

So, one of your goals in the first 30 days could be to meet the people outside the company you'll be working with, and one of your tasks could be to call and introduce yourself to them. 

Set Yourself up for Success With a 30-60-90 Plan

A 30-60-90-day plan removes the ambiguity from what you're expected to accomplish in the first 90 days as a new manager. They clarify your highest priorities and provide a clear action plan to get you working up to company standards. 

If you're hunting for a job or looking for a promotion, you can even create a 30-60-90 plan to impress interviewers. It may take some time, but it'll pay off on your path to becoming a successful manager. 

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The 30-60-90 Day Plan: Your Secret Weapon for New Job Success

When you’re starting a new job, sometimes deciding whether to pack a lunch the first day is a struggle—forget about planning out the next few months. So if you’ve been asked to make a 30-60-90 day plan for your new job—or even earlier during the interview process—you might have a few questions like What? And How? And Do I really need a job or can I live off the grid in a cozy little cave?

But we promise, making a 30-60-90 day plan is possible and it can help you set yourself up for success at your new gig. We’ve got detailed instructions on when and how to make a 30-60-90 day plan, plus a template to guide you and an example to inspire you.

What is a 30-60-90 day plan?

A 30-60-90 day plan is what it sounds like: a document that articulates your intentions for the first 30, 60, and 90 days of a new job. It lists your high-level priorities and actionable goals, as well as the metrics you’ll use to measure success in those first three months. Done well, it will help you make a positive first impression on your new employer—or the hiring manager you hope will be your future boss.

Download The Muse’s 30-60-90 day plan template here .

When to make a 30-60-90 day plan

Many 30-60-90 day plans follow a similar structure, but the level of detail may vary depending on your situation. There are two main times when you might make one: preparing for an interview or starting a new job.

Note: If you’re a manager who wants to make an onboarding plan to help your new hires hit the ground running (without constantly having to ask you what they should do next), you should consider using our self-onboarding tool , a template for outlining your month-one goals for a new hire, as well as creating a week-by-week plan with a thorough list of meetings, readings, and tasks they should tackle in their first month on the job.

For an interview

If you’ve made it to a late-stage job interview, you may be asked something along the lines of, “What would your first 30, 60, or 90 days look like in this role?” It’s a good idea to prepare to answer this regardless of what level role you’re interviewing for, but it’s more common for higher-level positions.

With interview questions  like this, the hiring manager is likely trying to understand your thought process going into the job more than anything. They want to know: Do you understand the role and what it would require of you? Can you get up to speed quickly and start contributing early on? Do your ideas show that you’re the right candidate to fill this particular position?

Even if you’re not explicitly asked this interview question, coming prepared with a plan can help you wow the hiring manager and stand out among other applicants. “Employers are looking for people who are agile and proactive,” says leadership consultant Michael Watkins, author of The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter . “By talking about how you would approach your first 90 days, you demonstrate agility and proactiveness.”

In other cases—more commonly for higher-level management or executive roles—you may be asked to do an interview presentation . Creating a 30-60-90 day plan to present is a great way to show the hiring manager that you understand the challenges a company or department is facing and you have a clear plan for tackling them.

Be sure to include a few specific ideas in your interview presentation—depending on the role you’re interviewing for, that could be suggestions for ways to cut costs, increase sales, or improve customer satisfaction. You want to convey: “I’ve got five good ideas, and when you hire me, I’ve got 50 more,” says career coach Eliot Kaplan , who spent 18 years as Vice President of Talent Acquisition at Hearst Magazines.

For a new job

If you’re starting a new job, your new manager may explicitly ask for a 30-60-90 day plan in writing, or you may want to create one for yourself to help ease the transition to your new role. In either case, the goal is to set yourself up to hit the ground running—and to be sure you’re running in the right direction.

“If you come in without a game plan and try to tackle everything, you’re going to get nothing done,” Kaplan says. “Come up with a couple things you can accomplish successfully.”

If you’ve already started the position, you’ll have access to internal resources and your new coworkers, which will make it easier to create a detailed, realistic plan. If there are things you’re unsure about—like goals, expectations, or typical benchmarks—ask! You’ll likely impress your new colleagues with how proactive you are, but more importantly, you’ll gather the information you need to be successful.

Elements of a 30-60-90 day plan

Before you’re ready to get down to the details of your 30-60-90 plan, you’ll want to think about the high-level elements it needs to include. As the name suggests, you want to think of your plan in three 30 day phases that translate to your first 30, 60, and 90 days on the job. For each phase, you’ll need to:

• Determine a specific focus
• Set your top priorities
• Make concrete goals that support those priorities
• Determine how you’ll measure success

Here’s how to fill in the major parts of your plan for each of the first three months: 

Your specific monthly focus might change based on your role and the company, but typically, the broad focus of each 30-day period will look similar:

• The first month (days 1-30) of a new job is about learning.
• The second month (days 31-60) is about planning and beginning to contribute
• The third month (days 61-90) is about execution and—when applicable—initiating changes to the status quo.

Within those broad monthly buckets, outline your high-level priorities for each phase. For instance, your priorities for different phases could include learning internal processes, performing your role independently, or proposing solutions to a problem facing the company. Your priorities should be more specific than your focuses, but broader than individual goals.

Setting goals is all about making a plan for how you’ll achieve your overarching priorities. For each phase, set goals that ladder up to your stated focus and priorities. (See our example 30-60-90 day plan below for inspiration.) If it’s helpful, break your goals into categories like learning, performance, and personal goals.

• Learning goals: To set these, ask, “What knowledge and skills do I need to be successful? How can I best absorb and acquire that information and those abilities?”
• Performance goals: These are concrete things you want to accomplish or complete as part of your new role. To set these, ask yourself, “What progress do I hope to make within the first 30/60/90 days?”
• Personal goals: These goals are more about getting to know the people you’ll be working with and finding your place within your new company or team. To set these, ask, “Who are the key people I need and want to build relationships with? How can I establish and foster those relationships, so that I’m seen as trustworthy and credible?”

For each goal, determine at least one metric you’ll use to track your progress. Ask yourself, “What does success look like and how will I measure it?” Not sure how to do that? Keep reading!

6 tips for writing a 30-60-90 day plan

So how do you figure out your focus, priorities, goals, and metrics for a brand new role? You’ll need to gain a deeper understanding of the challenges that the company or department is trying to solve and reflect on how you can make a positive impact within the first 90 days. Here are six tips to make that easier:

1. Think big picture .

Before you start writing out specific goals and metrics, reflect on your overall priorities. “Start with what’s important to you and work out from there,” says Muse career coach Yolanda Owens . “What are the things you’re going to need to know in order to be successful? Use [those] as your compass.” Identify why they hired (or are looking to hire) you, and set priorities that deliver on that purpose. For mid- and high-level roles, you’re likely being brought in to solve a specific problem or lead a particular project. For more junior roles, your priority can be getting up to speed on the basics of your role and how the company works.

2. Ask questions .

Whether you’re new to a company or still in the interview stage, asking questions is crucial. In order to set realistic goals and metrics that ladder up to your high-level priorities, you’ll need a baseline understanding of the status quo. Ask things that start with, “What’s the average…” or “What’s typical for…”

You can ask your new coworkers these questions or use early stage interviews to ask questions that could help you make a 30-60-90 day plan later on. Muse career coach Tamara Williams  suggests asking up front, “What can I tackle in the first 90 days that will allow me to hit the ground running as well as make a significant impact in the organization?”

3. Meet with key stakeholders.

Establishing healthy working relationships is key to success in any role. If you’ve already started the job, set up meetings with the following people within the first 30 days:

• Your manager
• Other coworkers on your team with whom you’ll work closely
• Other colleagues who are in your role or a similar one
• Any cross-functional partners (on other teams) you’ll work with regularly
• Any external partners (outside of the company) you’ll work with regularly
• Your new direct reports (if you’re a manager)

In each meeting, learn about your coworkers’ roles within the company—and also get to know them as people. Ask lots of questions about the company culture, internal processes, reporting structures, team and company challenges, and other questions that come up as you’re learning the ropes. It’s important to have these conversations before you make plans to change the way things are currently run.

“Too many times, [people] come into the role and say, ‘At my last company, we did it this way,’” Williams says. “That turns people off. You need to be a student before you become a teacher.”

4. Set SMART goals .

Once you’re clear on your high-level priorities, set specific goals that ladder up to your priorities for the 30-, 60-, and 90-day phases. These goals should be SMART: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound.

For example, instead of “Understand our SEO,” a SMART goal would be, “Within the first 30 days, identify our top 10 target keywords and assess how we’re currently ranking for them.”

5. Determine how you’ll measure success.

This will likely be different for each of your goals. Metrics are often quantifiable (revenue, pageviews, etc.), but some goals might have more qualitative metrics, like positive customer feedback. However, try to make even qualitative metrics measurable—for instance, the number of five-star reviews you receive.

6. Be flexible.

Don’t worry if you don’t end up following the plan precisely. Every job is different, so tailor your plan based on what you know about the role and organization, but accept that it will likely change. Ask for feedback throughout your first 90 days (and throughout your tenure at the company). If you have to course-correct as you go, that’s totally fine.

If you’re a team lead or executive, consider adding, “Conduct a SWOT analysis of my project, team, the department or the company as a whole,” to your plan during month two or three. SWOT simply stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Once you complete this exercise it might help you adjust the rest of your plan as well as set longer-term goals and strategies.

Also, don’t stress about the length of your written plan—it’s the quality that counts, Kaplan says. “I've gotten [90-day plans] that were two pages long and were perfect, and ones that were 40 pages long and were useless.”

30-60-90 day plan template

If all that feels a bit overwhelming, or you’d just like some more guidance, check out our (free) downloadable 30-60-90 day plan template .

Not a fan of our formatting? (Or just need the words and nothing else?) Copy and paste the text below for each month of your plan.

My 30-60-90 Day Plan

Prepared by: [Your name] Prepared for (optional): [Hiring manager or manager’s name, Company Name] Date: [MM/DD/YYYY]

Days [1–30/31–60/61–90]

Focus: [Your focus for your first month]

Priorities: [Your priorities for your first month]

Learning Goals

• [Your first goal.] ( Metric:  [How you’ll measure your first goal])
• [Your second goal.] ( Metric: [How you’ll measure your second goal]
• [Your third goal.] ( Metric: [How you’ll measure your third goal])

Performance Goals

• [Your first goal.] ( Metric: [How you’ll measure your first goal])

Personal Goals

30-60-90 day plan example

Use our 30-60-90 day plan template to start creating your own plan. If you’re stuck on how to fill it in, this example can provide some inspiration.

Focus: Learning

Priorities: Get up to speed on my role, team, and the company as a whole. Understand the expectations my manager has for me, learn how the internal processes and procedures currently work, and start to explore some of the challenges facing the company and my role.

Learning goals:

• Read all of the relevant internal materials available to me on the company wiki or drive and ask my manager for recommendations of articles, reports, and studies I should review. ( Metric: Reading completed)
• Get access to the accounts (email, task management software, customer relationship management platform, etc.) I’ll need to do my job. Spend time familiarizing myself with each of them. ( Metric: Task completed)
• Listen to five recorded sales calls by seasoned teammates. ( Metric: Five sales calls listened to)
• Meet with someone on the account management team to learn about what new clients can expect from the onboarding process. ( Metric: Task completed).

Performance goals:

• Make my first sales calls to key clients and prospects. ( Metric: Three sales calls completed)
• Ask my manager for feedback on my output and performance. Document the feedback so I can incorporate it in my future performance. ( Metric: Task completed)

Personal goals:

• Meet with my manager and as many other new coworkers as possible. Introduce myself and learn about their roles within the organization. ( Metric: Five meetings held)
• Set up recurring meetings with everyone I’ll need to work with on a regular basis—including cross-functional and external partners. ( Metric: Regular meetings set and attended)

Focus: Contributing.

Priorities: Perform my role at full capacity, with a decreased need for guidance. Start to explore how I can make a unique impact within my role and the company.

• Complete an online training course to learn how to better use our customer relationship management platform. ( Metric: One course completed)
• Shadow a seasoned member of the team, listen in on at least three of their sales calls, and document what I learn from observing their approach. ( Metric: Task completed)
• Make five sales calls a week to key clients and prospects. ( Metric: 20 calls completed)
• Ask a seasoned member of the team to observe at least one of my sales calls and give me feedback about how I can improve. ( Metric: Task completed)
• Listen to at least four of my own recorded calls and note self-feedback ( Metric: Four calls listened to)
• Ask for feedback from my manager and coworkers, and document the feedback so I can incorporate it in the future. ( Metric: TBD)
• Schedule coffee or lunch with someone from the company I haven’t gotten to know yet. ( Metric: Task completed)

Focus: Taking initiative.

Priorities: Start assuming more autonomy and finding small ways to practice leadership skills. Start to explore goals for the rest of the year.

• Identify and sign up for a conference, webinar, or online course that will aid in my professional development. ( Metric: One conference, course, or webinar signed up for)
• Analyze my performance so far and establish key metrics I care about (sales, leads, revenue, etc.). Implement a test to try to improve that metric. ( Metric: Task completed)
• Perform my core responsibilities at a higher level based on the metrics I outlined. (Close more sales, increase revenue, etc.) ( Metric: TBD)
• Develop an idea for a new project or initiative I can spearhead, and pitch it to my manager. ( Metric: Task completed)
• Complete the project or initiative I outlined and get feedback from key stakeholders. ( Metric: Project/initiative completed and feedback received from three key stakeholders)
• Get involved extracurricularly within the company by signing up for the corporate volunteer day or a company-sponsored club or sports team. ( Metric: Task completed.)

With our 30-60-90 day template, examples, and guidelines, you’re well-equipped to land the job you’re after or tackle your first 90 days in your new role. Happy planning!

Regina Borsellino also contributed writing, reporting, and/or advice to this article.

The Best 30-60-90 Day Plan for Your New Job [Template + Example]

Published: December 06, 2023

I remember my first day at HubSpot. I was so nervous and had a million concerns swimming around in my head.

Will I adapt to my new job? How long will it take for me to get the hang of things? Can I manage the workload and maintain a good rapport with my coworkers?

Fortunately, my outstanding manager at the time prepared a comprehensive checklist to be completed over a few months, and it helped me slowly but steadily adapt to HubSpot. Fast forward a few years, and I'm a rockstar at my job.

The checklist was called a 100-day checklist, but it followed the rhythm of a typical 30-60-90 Day Plan.

A 30-60-90 Day Plan, or something similar, is imperative to the success of a new employee as it helps them set and reach attainable goals and acclimate to their new position.

To help set your new employee, or yourself, up for success, here's what you need to know about crafting the best 30-60-90 Day Plan.

30-60-90 Day Plan

A 30-60-90 day plan lays out a clear course of action for a new employee during the first 30, 60, and 90 days of their new job. By setting concrete goals and a vision for one's abilities at each stage of the plan, you can make the transition into a new organization smooth and empowering.

Learning the nuances of your new role in less than three months won't be easy. But crafting a strong 30-60-90 day plan is your best bet for accelerating your development and adapting to your new work environment as quickly as possible.

You‘d write a 30-60-90 day plan in two situations: during the final stages of an interview and the first week of the job. Here’s how each type can be executed:

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30-60-90 Day Plan for Interview

Some hiring managers ask candidates to think about and explain their potential 30-60-90 day plan as a new hire.

As a candidate, this would sometimes confuse me in the past, but I now understand they just want to see if a potential hire can organize their time, prioritize the tasks they likely take, and strategize an approach to the job description.

For a new hire, a well-thought-out 30-60-90 day plan is a great way to help the hiring manager visualize you in the role and differentiate yourself from all other candidates.

But how can you outline your goals before accepting a new job? How are you supposed to know what those goals are? I've found that starting with the job description is an excellent stepping stone.

Typically, open job listings have separate sections for a job‘s responsibilities and a job’s qualifications. Work to find commonalities in these two sections and how you might turn them into goals for yourself.

Then, stagger those goals over three months.

For example, let‘s say a job requires three years of experience in Google Analytics, and the responsibilities include tracking the company’s website performance every month.

I would use these points to develop an action plan explaining how:

• I‘ll learn the company’s key performance metrics (first 30 days)
• Strengthen the company's performance in these metrics (next 30 days)
• Lead the team toward a better Google Analytics strategy (last 30 days)

30-60-90 Day Plan for New Job

The second situation where you‘d write a 30-60-90 day plan is during the first week of a new job, which I highly recommend whether you’re a new employee or a manager working with a new hire.

If you're the hiring manager, this plan will allow you to learn how the new employee operates, address their concerns or preconceived notions about the role, and ultimately help them succeed.

If you‘re starting a new job and are not asked to craft a 30-60-90 day plan during the first week of that job, it’s still a good idea to write one for yourself.

A new position can feel like a completely foreign environment during the first few months, and having a plan in place can make it feel more like home.

Even though 90 days is the standard grace period for new employees to learn the ropes, it's also the best time to make a great first impression.

How long should a 30-60-90 day plan be?

While there's no set length for a 30-60-90 day plan, it should include information about onboarding and training, set goals that you're expected to hit by the end of each phase, and all the people to meet and resources to review in support of those goals. This can result in a document that's 3-8 pages long, depending on formatting.

The purpose of your plan is to help you transition into your new role, but it should also be a catalyst for your career development.

Instead of just guiding you over your job's learning curve, the goals outlined in your plan should push you to perform up to your potential and raise the bar for success at every stage.

HubSpot's Senior Manager of Content (and my former manager) Meg Prater suggests having a solid template for your plan that allows it to evolve.

“Anytime I onboard someone, I review all training docs and ensure they're up to date,” she says. “I also ask for feedback from the folks on the team who have most recently been onboarded. What did they like? What didn't work for them?”

She also says moving the plan to a more interactive platform proved to be helpful to new employees.

“One of the most helpful shifts we've made recently is moving our 30-60-90 plan (or 100-Days Plan) from a static Google Doc to Asana,” she says. “The plan is organized by week, and each task contains relevant readings and links. It's much easier for folks to move through, and it gives me better insight into where folks are in the plan.”

Meg onboarded me when I started at HubSpot, and I can confirm that my checklist in Asana was a game-changer because it helped me stay on task and visually track my progress.

The checklist below isn‘t mine, but it’s one she set up and follows the same format as the one she created for me.

Free 30/60/90 Day Onboarding Template

Fill out the form to get the template., parts of a 30-60-90 day plan.

An effective 30-60-90 day plan consists of three extensive phases — one for days 1-30, one for days 31-60, and one for days 61-90.

Each phase has its own goal. For example, the goal in the first 30 days is to learn as much as possible about your new job.

The following 30 focus on using learned skills to contribute, and the last 30 are about demonstrating skill mastery with metrics and taking the lead on new challenges.

Each phase also contains components that help define goals and describe desired outcomes. These parts include:

The primer is a general overview of what you hope to achieve during the current 30-day period.

I prefer sitting down with my manager to pinpoint a primer that aligns with my goals and desired company outcomes, and I encourage you to do the same.

This ensures you and your manager are on the same page about expectations early on in your journey with the company.

The theme is a quick-hitter sentence or statement summarizing your goals for the period. For example, your theme might be “find new opportunities”, “take initiative,” or “be a sponge.”

Learning Goals

Learning goals focus on skills you want to learn or improve to drive better outcomes at your job. For example, if you're responsible for creating website content at your company, you should learn new HTML or CSS skills .

At the start of my career with HubSpot, some marketing trends and jargon were unfamiliar, and I wasn‘t used to the company’s writing style.

As a result, my learning goals as a new blogger were to become more well-versed in marketing and to adapt to HubSpot's writing style.

Performance Goals

Performance goals speak to specific metrics that demonstrate improvement. These include making one more weekly content post or reducing the revisions management requires.

For example, I was only writing one article per week when I started HubSpot, but it was my performance goal to be able to write multiple articles by the end of 30 days.

Initiative Goals

Initiative goals are about thinking outside the box to discover other ways you can contribute. This might mean asking your manager about taking ownership of new website changes or upgrades with a specific deadline in mind.

Personal Goals

Personal goals focus on company culture — are there ways you can improve relationships with your team members or demonstrate your willingness to contribute?

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Top 7 Three-Month Plan Templates with Samples and Examples

Densil Nazimudeen

In the business world, staying ahead of the curve requires a combination of foresight and adaptability. A well-structured 3-month plan is the bridge between envisioning success and realizing it. Whether you're honing your marketing strategies, orchestrating staff relocation, or navigating the intricate path of dual evolution, a carefully crafted plan is your compass. These plans are the roadmap to your success, offering a clear direction for your marketing strategies, action step description, and even staff relocation initiatives. In an era of rapid change, they ensure your enterprise stays agile and attuned to evolving market dynamics.

Now, picture this: You have a robust 3-month plan, but how do you effectively communicate it to your team or stakeholders? This is where SlideTeam’s Templates come into play. These PPT Themes improve your presentation and keep your selling ideas at the forefront because they are created to meet your demands and resolve your pain points.

Discover an engaging blog on Must-Have Monthly Chart Templates with Examples and Samples by clicking here .

These PPT Slides are more than just visual aids. They are tools that drive enterprise growth, scalability, and efficient plan execution review.

Stay tuned as we deep dive into each PPT Template, unveiling their unique features and demonstrating how they can elevate your marketing strategies , staff relocation plans, and every facet of your business, ensuring you remain on the path of scalable success in this ever-evolving landscape.

Even better, each of these templates is 100% editable and customizable. For a polished appearance and to save time, the presentation can be instantly updated with text, images, or data.

Explore our blog on Top 10 Monthly Project Status Report Templates with Examples and Samples by clicking here .

You have all the resources they need, such as captivating graphics, content-ready layouts, and excellent typography, to actively produce exceptional presentations.

Let's take a look at our PPT Templates.

Template 1: 3-Month Marketing Plan Template

Boost your marketing prowess with our comprehensive PPT deck! It is perfect for unveiling a dynamic 3-month content strategy, skyrocketing lead conversion rates, and amplifying your online brand presence. This package includes customer lifecycle stages, SMART objectives, content formats, and durations. Illuminate your digital advertising plan with business objectives, marketing strategies, budget forecasts, and timelines. Visualize a 3-month Gantt chart for product digital marketing, showcasing techniques, and projected goals. Dive into a strategic 3-month product marketing blueprint for the food industry, encompassing business evaluation and growth strategies. Maximize social media engagement with a customer journey plan featuring objectives, strategies, KPIs, and impact assessments.

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Template 2: Three-Month Action Plan to Develop Marketing Strategies Template

This PPT Theme outlines a market action plan detailing marketing goals, an action step description, the person responsible, the date to begin, and the date due. This action plan serves as a roadmap for an organization to achieve its monthly marketing goals. This PPT Preset streamlines planning and execution, saving time and resources while improving overall marketing effectiveness. Stakeholders can easily track progress and identify potential delays, enabling timely course corrections with a download.

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Template 3: Three-Month Strategy Roadmap with Planning and Review Template

Leveraging this PPT Slide, you can present a detailed plan over three months, outlining critical strategic initiatives. Categorize information and tasks into months 1, 2, and 3, enhancing clarity and structure. It showcases insights, including reviews, processes, and strategic planning, ensuring all aspects of your strategy are covered. This PPT Preset ensures team members and stakeholders are aligned with the strategic direction for each month.

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Template 4: Three-Month Change Transition Plan Roadmap Template

This PPT Slide lets you organize critical details such as management, communications, HR, and staff relocation into defined stages within the months 1, 2, and 3. This PPT Preset provides stakeholders an overview of the change transition plan. It facilitates easy progress tracking in each category, ensuring stakeholders stay informed. It promotes stakeholder alignment by presenting a coherent, step-by-step plan for managing change. Also, it enhances communication with stakeholders, ensuring everyone is on the same page regarding the change process.

Template 5: Three-Month Multiplayer Video Game Release Plan Roadmap Template

Using this PPT Template, you can visualize the video game's progression from alpha testing to beta testing and the final release. It demonstrates the three-month development milestones and events for the video game release. It highlights phases such as first contact, dual evolution, alliances shattered, empire expansion, awakening, and updates. This PPT Theme provides a clear and concise overview of the game's development timeline. Stakeholders understand strategic planning and milestones in the game's release, with just a glance at the PPT. Also, it allows stakeholders to track progress and anticipate critical events in the game's development.

Template 6: 3-Month Business Administration Roadmap with Financial Planning Template

This PPT Template highlights essential activities, including policy discussion, press release, planning, resource planning, plan implementation, and plan execution review. It provides a structured and visually engaging format for presenting the business administration plan. This PPT Slide helps stakeholders understand the strategic planning and critical activities involved. It facilitates effective communication and alignment among team members, investors, and decision-makers. It also enables stakeholders to track progress and anticipate important milestones and reviews.

Template 7: Three-Month Feature Plan Roadmap for Digital Product Template

This PPT Preset showcases each month's key phases and priorities for digital products. It showcases month 1, month 2, and month 3 for digital products, highlighting key phases such as consumer growth, enterprise growth, scalability, and analysis. This PPT Theme provides a clear and concise overview of the digital product's feature plan and development timeline. It helps stakeholders understand the strategic focus and priorities for the next three months. It facilitates effective communication and alignment among team members, investors, and partners.

Discover these 3-month plan templates today!

SlideTeam’s three-month plan templates and accompanying samples and examples is a valuable resource for individuals and organizations seeking effective project management and strategic planning. These templates offer a structured framework for setting goals, outlining tasks, and tracking progress over a concise yet meaningful timeframe. By providing real-world examples, they serve as practical guides for those navigating complex projects, helping them save time and effort while ensuring clarity and consistency in their planning processes. Whether for business, marketing, product development, or personal projects, these top 7 3-month plan templates empower users to make informed decisions, optimize resources, and achieve objectives.

Don't miss out on our insightful blog on Top 5 30-Day Plan Templates with Samples and Examples. Click here to read.

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See Long- and Short-term Results with a 3-6-12-24 Plan

Published: February 26, 2010 by Marc Thys

One of the major dilemmas companies face today is the pressure to deliver short-term improvements and benefits while still contributing to longer-term breakthrough objectives. The 3-6-12-24 planning tool helps practitioners find a way out of this predicament by presenting a coherent picture of the balance that must be achieved between short- and long-term objectives. An additional benefit: The Belts who run the improvement projects will see these not as stand-alone achievements, but as contributing to a bigger picture.

The 3-6-12-24 planning tool presented here is based on the same concepts and principles as multi-generation project planning (MGPP), an approach used to manage complex programs.

Clearing Up Communication

Two distinct audiences can benefit from this tool: the process owners that want to achieve their breakthrough objectives and the Belts that will execute the projects. Ultimately, the tool is a communication vehicle between these two parties.

Process owners typically want to have a clear picture of what results can be delivered by when, and how these results will contribute to the longer-term objectives. They also want to track the progress of these results and objectives. Moreover, they want to understand what resources will be needed.

Belts usually participate in the dialogue to develop the improvement plan. Based on their understanding of the challenges and uncertainties involved, they propose timelines, projects and resources to achieve the objectives and deliver the results. The process owners challenge them on these proposals in order to get the best return on investment in the shortest possible time frame.

Timing Is Everything

The numbers in the name of the 3-6-12-24 planning tool refer to months. For each of these milestones, targets should be set for key performance indicators of the business, and appropriate projects and work streams identified. The 24-month timeframe should help process owners to break out of fiscal year constraints that often restrict their thinking. Breakthrough objectives are seldom achieved within one fiscal year, so the time horizons have to be set accordingly.

The short-term horizons of three and six months will focus the Belts on concrete results. This should help overcome the syndrome whereby only large, complex DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) projects are defined and selected, designed to deliver within six months, but often dragging on for 10 months or longer. At the same time, the Belts are encouraged to come up with smaller, Kaizen-type projects. Not only does this type of project deliver results more quickly, but the projects often act as enablers for larger DMAIC projects that can be executed in parallel. The Kaizen projects also can be used as a vehicle to deliver quick wins that are often identified in the early stages of a DMAIC project.

Creating a Roadmap

The 3-6-12-24 planning tool can be best used for a rolling wave type of planning and review. This means that not only will the original plan be used to track progress and results every three months, but it will also be reviewed and adapted with that frequency. At the first review after three months, the original six-month target becomes the three-month target, and a new six-month target is set based on what now appears to be an achievable target on the road to the original 12-month target. Practitioners should revise the 12- and 24-month targets every six months, based on the insight gained over the previous six months. The 3-6-12-24 plan then becomes a living document to map out the road to the breakthrough objectives.

In the spirit of multigeneration planning, practitioners should ask the questions in Table 1 to determine the data and knowledge that must be gained in the first generation and is required to be able to execute the successive generations.

Typically, there should be a plan for each major component or objective of the breakthrough vision. For example, one business might have these three major objectives:

• Reduce defects
• Improve productivity
• Reduce lead time

Table 2 shows a sample 3-6-12-24 plan for reducing defects.

Taking On Project Responsibility

Introducing this tool also can be a major motivator for the Belts that are going to work on these projects. One or two Black Belts should be assigned to each of the areas and should be given two-year goals. From there, they should be allowed to develop the rest of the plan – including the projects that they are going to work on in the next six months in order to achieve these goals. This way Belts do not have to wait for DMAIC projects to be assigned to them and can avoid projects that are poorly defined, not clearly scoped and not part of a coherent set – let alone aligned to achieve a clear mid- to long-term goal. Furthermore, the Belts will have work beyond long-winded DMAIC projects because the plan encourages them to include shorter Kaizen events and even “just do it” type projects in their set.

The tool and approach also help the sponsors and process owners to fulfill their roles because they become fully accountable for the results of the plan, rather than having a vague role to “remove roadblocks” for the Belts.

Demonstrating Value

After the initial launch of this tool at a test business, practitioners achieved their performance objectives for the first half of the year several months sooner than expected, allowing them to set more aggressive targets for the second half of the year. The achievement helped bring about a major turnaround for the entire Lean Six Sigma program, which had been on the brink of failure due to a lack of understanding and leadership and an overemphasis on short-term financial results. The problems had led to very low levels of morale with the Belts, who were actually blamed for the lack of success with the program. Now they had an effective tool to focus the improvement efforts of the business, and it became easy to demonstrate the program’s alignment with the strategy and its value to the business.

With the 3-6-12-24 planning tool, practitioners stopped measuring the individual benefits of projects and concentrated on the collective impact of the projects on the business objectives. It turned out to be a win-win situation for all parties involved: the business, sponsors, process owners and Belts.

About the Author

How to Write a Business Plan for a Small Business

Noah Parsons

24 min. read

Updated September 2, 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 writing a business plan

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

You understand that writing a business plan helps you: 

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

As you start to write your business 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 writing your business 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

When writing a business plan, the produces and services section 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

When writing a business plan, 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

The last section of your business plan is your financial plan and forecasts. 

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 to write a 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

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 writing 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.

Writing 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 writing 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

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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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A 30-60-90 Day Plan For New Leaders

Team Dynamics

August 9, 2016 Paul LaRue Author of The UPwards Leader

Leaders new to a team have the unenviable task of getting results, building trust and establishing credibility.  All the while they are learning their new role, and possibly even a new company.

For some leaders, doing one or the other is attainable, but doing all simultaneously can be a daunting task. It can be a delicate balance at times, and giving attention to everything at once can be a bit overwhelming.

Whether the leader is brand new to leadership, or new to their team, or is a seasoned leader in a new company, the ability to quickly establish change can make or break the leader as well as their teams, and possibly the organization.

I have realized over the years that the most effective way for a leader to create results and build culture is to adopt a rolling focus, 30-60-90 day game plan. Here it is in simplified form:

First 30 Days - Focus on People & Culture

During this time you should make every effort to connect with as many people in your company as you can. At the same time, immerse yourself into the company culture: values, mission, goals, and current (if any) strategic plans. You want to find out who your people are, what strengths they bring to the team, and how aligned they are with the company culture. At the same time, you will be promoting the culture and re-establishing everyone's belief in the organization and where it's headed. Getting everyone connected to yourself, and more importantly to the greater vision and mission is the primary objective in the first 30 days.

Next 30 Days (30-60) - Build The Brand

As you are laying the foundation of culture among your people, you'll be seeing how things operate and looking for ways to execute flawlessly. Brands are built internally first, by insuring the business model and daily operations support the culture and effectively serve your clients and customers. Take this time to really focus on training, procedural simplification, process improvement, and other efficiencies that will make your brand more consistent and reliable. The best marketing campaign for any company is wasted money if the service cannot be relied upon.

Final Stretch (60-90 Days) - Profitable or Sustainable Growth

Now is the time to plan marketing, strategic growth and revenue opportunities. By this time you have started a trajectory that will enable you to capitalize on the work done thus far. Now you can confidently say your products are better than the competition because of the attention to quality. You can promote best-in-class service because your people are engaged. And you can find new methods to increase top-line revenue and control your costs that will allow the organization to fund new initiatives, hire more people, and impact more customers.

These 30-day increments are designed to make the most of the foundation needs of the organization before moving on to the next phases. That doesn't mean in the first 30 days you won't need to worry about operations or profit & loss (these are daily focuses from the first day). But you'll need to make the concerted effort to enhance the culture, then the brand, then the growth that will become the springboard for change and results. And through this 30/60/90 day cycle, you'll see results in your metrics at the end of each month that will show how effective this approach can be.

Many new leaders have a 3-month, 6-month, and first-year game plan to create impact in their new role. But in our faster world, you'll need to set up a way to hit the foundational touch-points both quickly and solidly. Set the ripple effect from Day 1 that allows culture and people to permeate operations and ripples through sustained results and future growth for your organization.

Paul draws off of his years in senior leadership to pursue his passion - to enable leaders to increase their positive influence in their world. He is the author of the book "Leadership LIFT" and a regular contributor to Michael Lee Stallard's Connection Culture website.

More from this author »

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15 Responses

Very good Paul — many leaders take the first 30 day recommendation for granted, not seeing the valuable and substantial return on investment of time and energy. Trust, respect, and rapport where one can influence is essential to achieving everything else. The trust is crucial in that when there is new leadership, fear is a natural emotion that is present and which clouds activity/productivity. Mitigate fear with actively building a trusting rapport. Bottom line, each team member needs reassurance that they will be respected and appreciated.

You’re right, JoAnn, in your assessments. It always starts with people!! I’ve seen many leaders lose trust in those first days and never recover.

Appreciate it!

Paul, I enjoyed your article and believe that you covered important points at a very high level. Structuring meet and greets in the first 30 days with key stakeholders and leaders in an organization should be something that the new leader approaches as a structured interview style. It has helped me in several situations especially in complex, highly matrixed organizations. The other important thing that the new leader should remember is to trust their gut. Trust but verify should be a 60 day assignment. Thanks for taking the time to write down a template. KG

You’re welcome Karen. Thank you!

I enjoyed your article a lot! I have made the mistake in the past of not spending enough time learning about the people first before the processes. As I am a stickler for details when you are talking 30 days, are you referring to working days only? When I hear someone talk about months we are talking about as few as 21 working days in February. I mention this because of the fast paced world we live in. Thanks!

The 30 day increments are month periods. I use that to help people see at least 2 months of performance. The 30 days in itself is not a hard and fast tiemframe, but due to measurable timeframes most people want ro see what the initla impact is.

The most important thing Gary, is to focus on the growing layers of foundation and not on the number of days. Be flexible but use the guideline to guide success.

Best to you!

Paul, Good article and thanks for sharing. I like the ideas of focusing on people and culture during the first period and building the brand during the second period. Knowing the people and understanding the culture of an organization are critical in my view to expanding on the brand (assuming one exists already). Leveraging off of the knowledge and experience of the people and the legacy of culture can be a powerful combination to gain trust and inspire others during change in my view. My thoughts on the third period is that this is the time to plan for profitability and sustainable growth by capitalizing on the work done thus far as you well put it. I agree that it is important to set a faster pace in today’s business environment and most important that a leader has a plan of action that can communicate a vision and act as a reference during the process. A clear and concise vision and a plan to achieve helps to respect others, build confidence, and in many ways binds the organization together in terms of collaboration and innovation in my opinion. Best Regards, Ray

Thank you so much, Ray! Yes we need a faster pace to get established by in today’s environment. Glad you found the ideas relevant and best of success to you!

Good article, As previously mentioned in a comment by Karen, meeting with key stakeholders is critical. I also believe that meeting those on the “front line” is equally as important. Understanding the vibe on the manufacturing floor or in the trenches of any department offers a fantastic opportunity to just understand the culture, but to build trust at that base level. Nothing creates as positive a “buzz” as when employees feel truly listened to from the higher-ups.

Absolutely Cheryl! It is so essential to start the right culture from day one. Building your team by meeting your team is the key way to lay that foundation.

Thanks Paul for this insights.

One additional element I have found to be crucial is to allow people to understand who I am and what my values and goals are for the organization. Early in my career I was installed to lead a struggling NJ-based organization that was reeling from 9/11 and the sudden removal of their patriarchal President. I had been brought in from Asia on an internal transfer but few people knew me. The very first thing I did was have a town hall meeting explaining who I was, what I believed in and what I knew we could accomplish. That set the tone and then I got to know everyone. They trusted me. It worked a treat and we became the most profitable region globally in 9 months.

Craig, you truly exemplified the “people and culture” part of the first 30 days. Great job!

Paul, This is an excellent article.

I wish I had read your article prior to starting with the organization that I’ve been working with for exactly one year. I did my observations, etc., and after the one year, staff reverted back to old behaviors and I was asked to prepare a 90 day Leadership Plan.

Excellent article, especially a clear theme for each 30 day concept plan. I feel your defining theme relates quite well with the team development principles – form (people and culture), storm (building brand), perform and transform (sustainable growth). Thank you Paul for sharing your thoughts and ideas.

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9 Business Plan Examples to Inspire Your Own (2024)

Need support creating your business plan? Check out these business plan examples for inspiration and guidance.

Any aspiring entrepreneur researching how to start a business will likely be advised to write a business plan. But few resources provide business plan examples to really guide you through writing one of your own.

Here are some real-world and illustrative business plan examples to help you craft your business plan .

Business plan format: 9 examples

The business plan examples in this article follow this template:

• Executive summary
• Company description
• Market analysis
• Products and services
• Marketing plan
• Logistics and operations plan
• Financial plan
• Customer segmentation

1. Executive summary

Your executive summary is a page that gives a high-level overview of the rest of your business plan. While it appears at the beginning, it’s easiest to write this section last, as there are details further in the report you’ll need to include here.

In this free business plan template , the executive summary is four paragraphs and takes a little over half a page. It clearly and efficiently communicates what the business does and what it plans to do, including its business model and target customers.

2. Company description

You might repurpose your company description elsewhere, like on your About page , social media profile pages, or other properties that require a boilerplate description of your small business.

Soap brand ORRIS has a blurb on its About page that could easily be repurposed for the company description section of its business plan.

You can also go more in-depth with your company overview and include the following sections, like in this business plan example for Paw Print Post:

Business structure

This section outlines how you registered your business —as an LLC , sole proprietorship, corporation, or other business type : “Paw Print Post will operate as a sole proprietorship run by the owner, Jane Matthews.”

Nature of the business

“Paw Print Post sells unique, one-of-a-kind digitally printed cards that are customized with a pet’s unique paw prints.”

“Paw Print Post operates primarily in the pet industry and sells goods that could also be categorized as part of the greeting card industry.”

Background information

“Jane Matthews, the founder of Paw Print Post, has a long history in the pet industry and working with animals, and was recently trained as a graphic designer. She’s combining those two loves to capture a niche in the market: unique greeting cards customized with a pet’s paw prints, without needing to resort to the traditional (and messy) options of casting your pet’s prints in plaster or using pet-safe ink to have them stamp their ’signature.’”

Business objectives

“Jane will have Paw Print Post ready to launch at the Big Important Pet Expo in Toronto to get the word out among industry players and consumers alike. After two years in business, Jane aims to drive $150,000 in annual revenue from the sale of Paw Print Post’s signature greeting cards and to have expanded into two new product categories.”

“Jane Matthews is the sole full-time employee of Paw Print Post but hires contractors as needed to support her workflow and fill gaps in her skill set. Notably, Paw Print Post has a standing contract for five hours a week of virtual assistant support with Virtual Assistants Pro.”

Your mission statement may also make an appearance here. Passionfruit shares its mission statement on its company website, and it would also work well in its example business plan.

3. Market analysis

The market analysis consists of research about supply and demand , your target demographics, industry trends, and the competitive landscape. You might run a SWOT analysis and include that in your business plan. 

Here’s an example SWOT analysis for an online tailored-shirt business:

You’ll also want to do a competitive analysis as part of the market research component of your business plan. This will tell you which businesses you’re up against and give you ideas on how to differentiate your brand. A broad competitive analysis might include:

• Target customers
• Unique value proposition , or what sets the products apart
• Sales pitch
• Price points for products
• Shipping policy

4. Products and services

This section of your business plan describes your offerings—which products and services do you sell to your customers? Here’s an example for Paw Print Post that explains its line of custom greeting cards, along with details on what makes its products unique.

5. Marketing plan

It’s always a good idea to develop a marketing plan before you launch your business. Your marketing plan shows how you’ll get the word out about your business, and it’s an essential component of your business plan as well.

The Paw Print Post focuses on four Ps: price, product, promotion, and place. However, you can take a different approach with your marketing plan. Maybe you can pull from your existing marketing strategy , or maybe you break it down by the different marketing channels. Whatever approach you take, your marketing plan should describe how you intend to promote your business and offerings to potential customers.

6. Logistics and operations plan

The Paw Print Post example considered suppliers, production, facilities, equipment, shipping and fulfillment, and inventory. This includes any raw materials needed to produce the products.

7. Financial plan

The financial plan provides a breakdown of sales, revenue, profit, expenses, and other relevant financial metrics related to funding and profiting from your business.

Ecommerce brand Nature’s Candy’s financial plan breaks down predicted revenue, expenses, and net profit in graphs.

It then dives deeper into the financials to include:

• Funding needs
• Projected profit-and-loss statement
• Projected balance sheet
• Projected cash-flow statement

You can use a financial plan spreadsheet to build your own financial statements, including income statement, balance sheet, and cash-flow statement.

8. Customer segmentation

Customer segmentation means dividing your target market into groups based on specific characteristics. These characteristics can be demographics, psychographics, behavior, or geography. Your business plan will provide detailed information on each segment, like its size and growth potential, so you can show why they are valuable to your business. 

Airsign , an eco-friendly vacuum cleaner company, faced the challenge of building a sustainable business model in the competitive home appliance market. They identified three key customer personas to target:

• Design-oriented urban dwellers
• Millennials moving to suburbs
• Older consumers seeking high-quality appliances

The company utilized Shopify’s customer segmentation tools to gain insights and take action to target them. Airsign created targeted segments for specific marketing initiatives.

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

Shopify’s built-in segmentation tools help you discover insights about your customers, build segments as targeted as your marketing plans with filters based on your customers’ demographic and behavioral data, and drive sales with timely and personalized emails.

9. Appendix

The appendix provides in-depth data, research, or documentation that supports the claims and projections made in the main business plan. It includes things like market research, finance, résumés, product specs, and legal documents. 

Readers can access detailed info in the appendix, but the main plan stays focused and easy to read. Here’s an example from a fictional clothing brand called Bloom:

Appendix: Bloom Business Plan

Types of business plans, and what to include for each

This lean business plan is meant to be high level and easy to understand at a glance. You’ll want to include all of the same sections in one-page business plan, but make sure they’re truncated and summarized:

• Executive summary: truncated
• Market analysis: summarized
• Products and services: summarized
• Marketing plan: summarized
• Logistics and operations plan: summarized
• Financials: summarized

A startup business plan is for a new business. Typically, these plans are developed and shared to secure funding . As such, there’s a bigger focus on the financials, as well as on other sections that determine viability of your business idea—market research, for example:

• Market analysis: in-depth
• Financials: in-depth

Your internal business plan is meant to keep your team on the same page and aligned toward the same goal:

A strategic, or growth, business plan is a big-picture, long-term look at your business. As such, the forecasts tend to look further into the future, and growth and revenue goals may be higher. Essentially, you want to use all the sections you would in a normal business plan and build upon each:

• Market analysis: comprehensive outlook
• Products and services: for launch and expansion
• Marketing plan: comprehensive outlook
• Logistics and operations plan: comprehensive outlook
• Financials: comprehensive outlook

Feasibility

Your feasibility business plan is sort of a pre-business plan—many refer to it as simply a feasibility study. This plan essentially lays the groundwork and validates that it’s worth the effort to make a full business plan for your idea. As such, it’s mostly centered around research:

Nonprofit business plans are used to attract donors, grants, and partnerships. They focus on what their mission is, how they measure success, and how they get funded. You’ll want to include the following sections in addition to a traditional business plan:

• Organization description
• Need statement
• Programs and services
• Fundraising plan
• Partnerships and collaborations
• Impact measurement

Set yourself up for success as a business owner

Building a good business plan serves as a roadmap you can use for your ecommerce business at launch and as you reach each of your business goals. Business plans create accountability for entrepreneurs and synergy among teams, regardless of your business model .

Kickstart your ecommerce business and set yourself up for success with an intentional business planning process—and with the sample business plans above to guide your own path.

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Business plan examples FAQ

How do i write a simple business plan.

To write a simple business plan, begin with an executive summary that outlines your business and your plans. Follow this with sections detailing your company description, market analysis, organization and management structure, product or service, marketing and sales strategy, and financial projections. Each section should be concise and clearly illustrate your strategies and goals.

What is the best format to write a business plan?

The best business plan format presents your plan in a clear, organized manner, making it easier for potential investors to understand your business model and goals. Always begin with the executive summary and end with financial information or appendices for any additional data.

What are the 4 key elements of a business plan?

• Executive summary: A concise overview of the company’s mission, goals, target audience, and financial objectives.
• Business description: A description of the company’s purpose, operations, products and services, target markets, and competitive landscape.
• Market analysis: An analysis of the industry, market trends, potential customers, and competitors.
• Financial plan: A detailed description of the company’s financial forecasts and strategies.

What are the 3 main points of a business plan?

• Concept: Your concept should explain the purpose of your business and provide an overall summary of what you intend to accomplish.
• Contents: Your content should include details about the products and services you provide, your target market, and your competition.
• Cash flow: Your cash flow section should include information about your expected cash inflows and outflows, such as capital investments, operating costs, and revenue projections.

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30-60-90 Day Plan: 2024 Guide + Example

Updated: Apr 17, 2024, 11:50am

Table of Contents

What is a 30-60-90 day plan, benefits of a 30-60-90 day plan, elements of a 30-60-90 day plan, when to make a 30-60-90 day plan, how to make a 30-60-90 day plan in 5 steps, 30-60-90 plan example, frequently asked questions (faqs).

It can take new employees time to settle in and learn the ropes of a new position. However, employers want to see productivity sooner than later. This is why developing a 30-60-90 day plan is a good idea. It’s a plan that outlines target milestones for employees to hit in the first 30, 60 and 90 days of employment. Follow along to learn more about the 30-60-90-day plan and how to create your own. To help give your employees the best start possible.

A 30-60-90 day plan is a document that is created either by a new employee or a hiring manager and outlines the goals to be accomplished during the first three months of employment. It breaks goals down into 30-, 60- and 90-day increments. Employees work to hit set milestones that are aligned with the mission of the organization. The goal is to maximize employee output in the first days of being hired, days which can be overwhelming and confusing in many cases. The plan helps simplify what the employee should be doing and focusing on.

The 30-60-90 day plan can be written by the employee or by the hiring manager. Managers may want employees to create their own plans to get the buy-in for the milestones and goals.

What Makes a Good 30-60-90 Day Plan?

A good 30-60-90 day plan takes larger goals and breaks them down into smaller, more digestible milestones. The plan has an ultimate goal set for 90 days and shows steps that are accomplished along the way at the 30- and 60-day marks. While the goals should be accomplishable, they should also be challenging.

A good plan also aligns with the mission of the company. Managers want employees to work on goals that move the company forward. Otherwise, the company may not meet its objectives and goals.

When managers utilize a 30-60-90 day plan for onboarding new employees , they help identify the key goals for the employee in the early days of employment. Not only does it set the parameters for success, but it also empowers employees to manage their own work to a large degree. When employees know what is expected of them, they can spend their day focusing on achieving those goals rather than on tasks that don’t support the plan. The 30-60-90 day plan is the roadmap for success.

A good 30-60-90 day plan has common components that are designed to explain expectations clearly. The first element of the plan is to have the company mission or purpose of the work stated. Then, of course, there are the goals. Goals should be concrete with measurable objectives. A good 30-60-90 day plan also lists resources to help employees accomplish their goals.

Make a 30-60-90 day plan when you onboard a new employee. It will serve as a way to help transition them from a new employee to a valuable team member in a short amount of time. You can also use a 30-60-90 day plan when rolling out new initiatives. This will help existing employees understand the goals and provide a workable path to accomplishing them.

It may also be helpful for a prospective employee to create a 30-60-90 day plan when preparing for an interview. This will show the hiring manager that you are serious about hitting the ground running and making an impact toward objectives and goals.

A 30-60-90 day plan doesn’t need to be complicated. It simply outlines the main objectives of a new employee and gives them guidance on how to accomplish them.

Here’s how to create a 30-60-90 day play in five easy steps:

1. Write the company mission

The very first thing that you should do when creating a 30-60-90 day plan is to identify and write down the company mission. Remember that the plan should align with the company’s mission and goals. By having it on the page for the employee to review, you can help the employee understand their role in the bigger picture.

2. Create the first 30 days’ objectives

Write down the goals for the first 30 days. Limit the goals to three to five to keep things clear. For each goal, write down a key metric that will be used to measure whether the goal is achieved or not.

3. Create the next 60- and 90-day objectives

Just as you did for the first 30 days, write down key goals for the first 60 days. Remember to keep goals limited to three to five goals for clarity. Have a key metric stated for each goal. Do the same for the first 90 days.

4. Provide ample resources for the employee

Because the plan is a guide, you should include any relevant resources that will help the employee accomplish their goals. Resources may include listing certain people to speak with or using certain computer-led tutorials. Give the employee the resources needed to succeed with as little oversight as possible.

5. Evaluate progress

For a 30-60-90 day plan to work, you need to give it time (as the name suggests). Part of the plan is to give said time and then follow-up with an evaluation. Did the employee manage to use the resources provided to hit their objectives?

Plan For: Employee name Date: August 1, 2022

Company Mission: To help consumers find the right resources for retirement and invest their money with our firm.

Goal 1: To complete all onboarding training. All boxes should be checked as complete in the employee file. Goal 2: Review investment products and become familiar with the key benefits. Goal 3: Pass state and federal licensing requirements to sell investment products.

Goal 1: Make first sales calls to potential clients. Goal 2: Work with your manager to develop a key product list to offer clients. Goal 3: Get the first sale in the program.

Goal 1: Consistently make 50 outbound calls per day. Goal 2: Hold at least three sales appointments per day. Goal 3: Generate at least $500,000 in sales.

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Bottom Line

A 30-60-90 day plan is a great way to help onboard new employees (or get an edge in an interview process) because it shows the key objectives for the first three months of employment. It aligns with the company’s mission, helping the employee integrate quickly into becoming a valuable team member. Set realistic goals in a 30-60-90 day plan to see success and build confidence in new team members.

The 30-60-90 day plan is just one tool in the employer’s toolkit. For more insights into managing staff and building strong teams, check out our article on strategic human resource management .

How do I answer what I will do in the first 30-60-90 days?

Prepare for this question in an interview. Make sure you approach it from the perspective of the company’s goals and say what you plan on accomplishing based on what you know about the job description. Don’t hesitate to ask questions to clarify the role before answering the question.

How many slides should a 30-60-90 day plan be?

If you are presenting a plan in a PowerPoint, you want to use three to four slides. The first slide should outline the mission and overall objective of the company, while the next three slides review the goals. Use one slide for each month.

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Step-by-Step Guide to Writing a Simple Business Plan

By Joe Weller | October 11, 2021

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A business plan is the cornerstone of any successful company, regardless of size or industry. This step-by-step guide provides information on writing a business plan for organizations at any stage, complete with free templates and expert advice. 

Included on this page, you’ll find a step-by-step guide to writing a business plan and a chart to identify which type of business plan you should write . Plus, find information on how a business plan can help grow a business and expert tips on writing one .

What Is a Business Plan?

A business plan is a document that communicates a company’s goals and ambitions, along with the timeline, finances, and methods needed to achieve them. Additionally, it may include a mission statement and details about the specific products or services offered.

A business plan can highlight varying time periods, depending on the stage of your company and its goals. That said, a typical business plan will include the following benchmarks:

• Product goals and deadlines for each month
• Monthly financials for the first two years
• Profit and loss statements for the first three to five years
• Balance sheet projections for the first three to five years

Startups, entrepreneurs, and small businesses all create business plans to use as a guide as their new company progresses. Larger organizations may also create (and update) a business plan to keep high-level goals, financials, and timelines in check.

While you certainly need to have a formalized outline of your business’s goals and finances, creating a business plan can also help you determine a company’s viability, its profitability (including when it will first turn a profit), and how much money you will need from investors. In turn, a business plan has functional value as well: Not only does outlining goals help keep you accountable on a timeline, it can also attract investors in and of itself and, therefore, act as an effective strategy for growth.

For more information, visit our comprehensive guide to writing a strategic plan or download free strategic plan templates . This page focuses on for-profit business plans, but you can read our article with nonprofit business plan templates .

Business Plan Steps

The specific information in your business plan will vary, depending on the needs and goals of your venture, but a typical plan includes the following ordered elements:

• Executive summary
• Description of business
• Market analysis
• Competitive analysis
• Description of organizational management
• Description of product or services
• Marketing plan
• Sales strategy
• Funding details (or request for funding)
• Financial projections

If your plan is particularly long or complicated, consider adding a table of contents or an appendix for reference. For an in-depth description of each step listed above, read “ How to Write a Business Plan Step by Step ” below.

Broadly speaking, your audience includes anyone with a vested interest in your organization. They can include potential and existing investors, as well as customers, internal team members, suppliers, and vendors.

Do I Need a Simple or Detailed Plan?

Your business’s stage and intended audience dictates the level of detail your plan needs. Corporations require a thorough business plan — up to 100 pages. Small businesses or startups should have a concise plan focusing on financials and strategy.

How to Choose the Right Plan for Your Business

In order to identify which type of business plan you need to create, ask: “What do we want the plan to do?” Identify function first, and form will follow.

Use the chart below as a guide for what type of business plan to create:

Is the Order of Your Business Plan Important?

There is no set order for a business plan, with the exception of the executive summary, which should always come first. Beyond that, simply ensure that you organize the plan in a way that makes sense and flows naturally.

The Difference Between Traditional and Lean Business Plans

A traditional business plan follows the standard structure — because these plans encourage detail, they tend to require more work upfront and can run dozens of pages. A Lean business plan is less common and focuses on summarizing critical points for each section. These plans take much less work and typically run one page in length.

In general, you should use a traditional model for a legacy company, a large company, or any business that does not adhere to Lean (or another Agile method ). Use Lean if you expect the company to pivot quickly or if you already employ a Lean strategy with other business operations. Additionally, a Lean business plan can suffice if the document is for internal use only. Stick to a traditional version for investors, as they may be more sensitive to sudden changes or a high degree of built-in flexibility in the plan.

How to Write a Business Plan Step by Step

Writing a strong business plan requires research and attention to detail for each section. Below, you’ll find a 10-step guide to researching and defining each element in the plan.

Step 1: Executive Summary

The executive summary will always be the first section of your business plan. The goal is to answer the following questions:

• What is the vision and mission of the company?
• What are the company’s short- and long-term goals?

See our  roundup of executive summary examples and templates for samples. Read our executive summary guide to learn more about writing one.

Step 2: Description of Business

The goal of this section is to define the realm, scope, and intent of your venture. To do so, answer the following questions as clearly and concisely as possible:

• What business are we in?
• What does our business do?

Step 3: Market Analysis

In this section, provide evidence that you have surveyed and understand the current marketplace, and that your product or service satisfies a niche in the market. To do so, answer these questions:

• Who is our customer? 
• What does that customer value?

Step 4: Competitive Analysis

In many cases, a business plan proposes not a brand-new (or even market-disrupting) venture, but a more competitive version — whether via features, pricing, integrations, etc. — than what is currently available. In this section, answer the following questions to show that your product or service stands to outpace competitors:

• Who is the competition? 
• What do they do best? 
• What is our unique value proposition?

Step 5: Description of Organizational Management

In this section, write an overview of the team members and other key personnel who are integral to success. List roles and responsibilities, and if possible, note the hierarchy or team structure.

Step 6: Description of Products or Services

In this section, clearly define your product or service, as well as all the effort and resources that go into producing it. The strength of your product largely defines the success of your business, so it’s imperative that you take time to test and refine the product before launching into marketing, sales, or funding details.

Questions to answer in this section are as follows:

• What is the product or service?
• How do we produce it, and what resources are necessary for production?

Step 7: Marketing Plan

In this section, define the marketing strategy for your product or service. This doesn’t need to be as fleshed out as a full marketing plan , but it should answer basic questions, such as the following:

• Who is the target market (if different from existing customer base)?
• What channels will you use to reach your target market?
• What resources does your marketing strategy require, and do you have access to them?
• If possible, do you have a rough estimate of timeline and budget?
• How will you measure success?

Step 8: Sales Plan

Write an overview of the sales strategy, including the priorities of each cycle, steps to achieve these goals, and metrics for success. For the purposes of a business plan, this section does not need to be a comprehensive, in-depth sales plan , but can simply outline the high-level objectives and strategies of your sales efforts. 

Start by answering the following questions:

• What is the sales strategy?
• What are the tools and tactics you will use to achieve your goals?
• What are the potential obstacles, and how will you overcome them?
• What is the timeline for sales and turning a profit?
• What are the metrics of success?

Step 9: Funding Details (or Request for Funding)

This section is one of the most critical parts of your business plan, particularly if you are sharing it with investors. You do not need to provide a full financial plan, but you should be able to answer the following questions:

• How much capital do you currently have? How much capital do you need?
• How will you grow the team (onboarding, team structure, training and development)?
• What are your physical needs and constraints (space, equipment, etc.)?

Step 10: Financial Projections

Apart from the fundraising analysis, investors like to see thought-out financial projections for the future. As discussed earlier, depending on the scope and stage of your business, this could be anywhere from one to five years. 

While these projections won’t be exact — and will need to be somewhat flexible — you should be able to gauge the following:

• How and when will the company first generate a profit?
• How will the company maintain profit thereafter?

Business Plan Template

Download Business Plan Template

Microsoft Excel | Smartsheet

This basic business plan template has space for all the traditional elements: an executive summary, product or service details, target audience, marketing and sales strategies, etc. In the finances sections, input your baseline numbers, and the template will automatically calculate projections for sales forecasting, financial statements, and more.

For templates tailored to more specific needs, visit this business plan template roundup or download a fill-in-the-blank business plan template to make things easy. 

If you are looking for a particular template by file type, visit our pages dedicated exclusively to Microsoft Excel , Microsoft Word , and Adobe PDF business plan templates.

How to Write a Simple Business Plan

A simple business plan is a streamlined, lightweight version of the large, traditional model. As opposed to a one-page business plan , which communicates high-level information for quick overviews (such as a stakeholder presentation), a simple business plan can exceed one page.

Below are the steps for creating a generic simple business plan, which are reflected in the template below .

• Write the Executive Summary This section is the same as in the traditional business plan — simply offer an overview of what’s in the business plan, the prospect or core offering, and the short- and long-term goals of the company. 
• Add a Company Overview Document the larger company mission and vision. 
• Provide the Problem and Solution In straightforward terms, define the problem you are attempting to solve with your product or service and how your company will attempt to do it. Think of this section as the gap in the market you are attempting to close.
• Identify the Target Market Who is your company (and its products or services) attempting to reach? If possible, briefly define your buyer personas .
• Write About the Competition In this section, demonstrate your knowledge of the market by listing the current competitors and outlining your competitive advantage.
• Describe Your Product or Service Offerings Get down to brass tacks and define your product or service. What exactly are you selling?
• Outline Your Marketing Tactics Without getting into too much detail, describe your planned marketing initiatives.
• Add a Timeline and the Metrics You Will Use to Measure Success Offer a rough timeline, including milestones and key performance indicators (KPIs) that you will use to measure your progress.
• Include Your Financial Forecasts Write an overview of your financial plan that demonstrates you have done your research and adequate modeling. You can also list key assumptions that go into this forecasting. 
• Identify Your Financing Needs This section is where you will make your funding request. Based on everything in the business plan, list your proposed sources of funding, as well as how you will use it.

Simple Business Plan Template

Download Simple Business Plan Template

Microsoft Excel |  Microsoft Word | Adobe PDF  | Smartsheet

Use this simple business plan template to outline each aspect of your organization, including information about financing and opportunities to seek out further funding. This template is completely customizable to fit the needs of any business, whether it’s a startup or large company.

Read our article offering free simple business plan templates or free 30-60-90-day business plan templates to find more tailored options. You can also explore our collection of one page business templates . 

How to Write a Business Plan for a Lean Startup

A Lean startup business plan is a more Agile approach to a traditional version. The plan focuses more on activities, processes, and relationships (and maintains flexibility in all aspects), rather than on concrete deliverables and timelines.

While there is some overlap between a traditional and a Lean business plan, you can write a Lean plan by following the steps below:

• Add Your Value Proposition Take a streamlined approach to describing your product or service. What is the unique value your startup aims to deliver to customers? Make sure the team is aligned on the core offering and that you can state it in clear, simple language.
• List Your Key Partners List any other businesses you will work with to realize your vision, including external vendors, suppliers, and partners. This section demonstrates that you have thoughtfully considered the resources you can provide internally, identified areas for external assistance, and conducted research to find alternatives.
• Note the Key Activities Describe the key activities of your business, including sourcing, production, marketing, distribution channels, and customer relationships.
• Include Your Key Resources List the critical resources — including personnel, equipment, space, and intellectual property — that will enable you to deliver your unique value.
• Identify Your Customer Relationships and Channels In this section, document how you will reach and build relationships with customers. Provide a high-level map of the customer experience from start to finish, including the spaces in which you will interact with the customer (online, retail, etc.). 
• Detail Your Marketing Channels Describe the marketing methods and communication platforms you will use to identify and nurture your relationships with customers. These could be email, advertising, social media, etc.
• Explain the Cost Structure This section is especially necessary in the early stages of a business. Will you prioritize maximizing value or keeping costs low? List the foundational startup costs and how you will move toward profit over time.
• Share Your Revenue Streams Over time, how will the company make money? Include both the direct product or service purchase, as well as secondary sources of revenue, such as subscriptions, selling advertising space, fundraising, etc.

Lean Business Plan Template for Startups

Download Lean Business Plan Template for Startups

Microsoft Word | Adobe PDF

Startup leaders can use this Lean business plan template to relay the most critical information from a traditional plan. You’ll find all the sections listed above, including spaces for industry and product overviews, cost structure and sources of revenue, and key metrics, and a timeline. The template is completely customizable, so you can edit it to suit the objectives of your Lean startups.

See our wide variety of  startup business plan templates for more options.

How to Write a Business Plan for a Loan

A business plan for a loan, often called a loan proposal , includes many of the same aspects of a traditional business plan, as well as additional financial documents, such as a credit history, a loan request, and a loan repayment plan.

In addition, you may be asked to include personal and business financial statements, a form of collateral, and equity investment information.

Download free financial templates to support your business plan.

Tips for Writing a Business Plan

Outside of including all the key details in your business plan, you have several options to elevate the document for the highest chance of winning funding and other resources. Follow these tips from experts:.

• Keep It Simple: Avner Brodsky , the Co-Founder and CEO of Lezgo Limited, an online marketing company, uses the acronym KISS (keep it short and simple) as a variation on this idea. “The business plan is not a college thesis,” he says. “Just focus on providing the essential information.”
• Do Adequate Research: Michael Dean, the Co-Founder of Pool Research , encourages business leaders to “invest time in research, both internal and external (market, finance, legal etc.). Avoid being overly ambitious or presumptive. Instead, keep everything objective, balanced, and accurate.” Your plan needs to stand on its own, and you must have the data to back up any claims or forecasting you make. As Brodsky explains, “Your business needs to be grounded on the realities of the market in your chosen location. Get the most recent data from authoritative sources so that the figures are vetted by experts and are reliable.”
• Set Clear Goals: Make sure your plan includes clear, time-based goals. “Short-term goals are key to momentum growth and are especially important to identify for new businesses,” advises Dean.
• Know (and Address) Your Weaknesses: “This awareness sets you up to overcome your weak points much quicker than waiting for them to arise,” shares Dean. Brodsky recommends performing a full SWOT analysis to identify your weaknesses, too. “Your business will fare better with self-knowledge, which will help you better define the mission of your business, as well as the strategies you will choose to achieve your objectives,” he adds.
• Seek Peer or Mentor Review: “Ask for feedback on your drafts and for areas to improve,” advises Brodsky. “When your mind is filled with dreams for your business, sometimes it is an outsider who can tell you what you’re missing and will save your business from being a product of whimsy.”

Outside of these more practical tips, the language you use is also important and may make or break your business plan.

Shaun Heng, VP of Operations at Coin Market Cap , gives the following advice on the writing, “Your business plan is your sales pitch to an investor. And as with any sales pitch, you need to strike the right tone and hit a few emotional chords. This is a little tricky in a business plan, because you also need to be formal and matter-of-fact. But you can still impress by weaving in descriptive language and saying things in a more elegant way.

“A great way to do this is by expanding your vocabulary, avoiding word repetition, and using business language. Instead of saying that something ‘will bring in as many customers as possible,’ try saying ‘will garner the largest possible market segment.’ Elevate your writing with precise descriptive words and you'll impress even the busiest investor.”

Additionally, Dean recommends that you “stay consistent and concise by keeping your tone and style steady throughout, and your language clear and precise. Include only what is 100 percent necessary.”

Resources for Writing a Business Plan

While a template provides a great outline of what to include in a business plan, a live document or more robust program can provide additional functionality, visibility, and real-time updates. The U.S. Small Business Association also curates resources for writing a business plan.

Additionally, you can use business plan software to house data, attach documentation, and share information with stakeholders. Popular options include LivePlan, Enloop, BizPlanner, PlanGuru, and iPlanner.

How a Business Plan Helps to Grow Your Business

A business plan — both the exercise of creating one and the document — can grow your business by helping you to refine your product, target audience, sales plan, identify opportunities, secure funding, and build new partnerships. 

Outside of these immediate returns, writing a business plan is a useful exercise in that it forces you to research the market, which prompts you to forge your unique value proposition and identify ways to beat the competition. Doing so will also help you build (and keep you accountable to) attainable financial and product milestones. And down the line, it will serve as a welcome guide as hurdles inevitably arise.

Streamline Your Business Planning Activities with Real-Time Work Management in Smartsheet

Empower your people to go above and beyond with a flexible platform designed to match the needs of your team — and adapt as those needs change. 

The Smartsheet platform makes it easy to plan, capture, manage, and report on work from anywhere, helping your team be more effective and get more done. Report on key metrics and get real-time visibility into work as it happens with roll-up reports, dashboards, and automated workflows built to keep your team connected and informed. 

When teams have clarity into the work getting done, there’s no telling how much more they can accomplish in the same amount of time.  Try Smartsheet for free, today.

Discover why over 90% of Fortune 100 companies trust Smartsheet to get work done.

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Building a Monthly Business Plan

While it’s important to create a 10-year business model, your real focus should be on your business plan for three years, two years and one year. Once that’s set, reverse engineer it to the quarter and then down to the month.

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Look at everything from a quantitative standpoint:

• Remember that every single thing you do, positive or negative, compounds consistently over time. So, execution is number one.
• What are the top three specific and measurable things you must do every single day?
• Set your calendar in blocks of 15, 20 and 30 minutes.
• Determine your top three metrics – calls, meetings, proposals – for the activities you get paid for and the ones you don’t. Focus on the things you get paid for; that’s what drives the key metrics of your plan for the month.
• What are your top three personal goals? It’s essential to have a little balance in your life.
• Write out your top five values. You need to be connected to not only your company values, but your personal values.
• Write down what you’re grateful for and what you’re thankful for.
• What is your marketing plan? What top three things are you going to do for it?
• Understand what your purpose is and what drives you. It’s really important to understand your purpose. That is what gives you the energy to wake up every morning and do what you need to do.
• Make sure you have a top 30 client list that includes top 10 current, top 10 prospects, and top 10 centers or spheres of influence. What is your game plan for each?
• What is the one thing you will stop, the one thing you will start, and the one new habit that you will build over the next 30 days?
• Have a mentor and an accountability plan.  It’s easy to build out a plan, but it’s really difficult to stick to it. That’s why I encourage everybody to have a mentor or an accountability partner, someone who is going to push you out of your comfort zone and who will call you out on your excuses.
• Finally, commit to consistent daily execution. Look your plan every morning, every night and throughout the day so you can adjust on the fly as the market determines. Remember, this is a  living business plan. And living your plan is the key to thinking big.

Originally published Jan. 25, 2021.

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How To Craft A 5-Step Business Plan For Next 3 Months

Planning your business growth for the next 3 months will help you make progress much faster than taking things on a day-to-day ad-hoc basis. In this podcast, I'm going to walk through a simple 3 months business planning exercise you give you better clarity on your next action steps.

If this podcast inspired you, please drop a 5-star review on Apple or Spotify .

What you will learn in this podcast?

Share this post.

Sidz is a college drop-out, "musician turned digital geek", a spiritually grounded minimalist, father of 2, and husband of a loving wife. He founded the Internet Lifestyle Hub in 2018 to fix the education and employment system for good. Currently, he is helping over 30,000+ coaches, teachers, and experts digitize their knowledge. He’s an international best-selling author of the book You Can Coach and is on a mission to help 1,000,000 people live a lifestyle of freedom!

72 replies to "How To Craft A 5-Step Business Plan For Next 3 Months"

Thanks Sidz for sharing this.

My learning’s 1. Revenue goal- How much income you need and allocate expenses for home, recurring expense etc 2. Monthly theme – One month focus on content , one month for creating courses, tribe building, list out top 3 themes for next 3 months. 3. Define what are the top 5 actions you need to take for those themes. Total 15 actions. 4. Get clear on your weekly focus. ( For each month) Total 12 slots for actions 5. Get to work- Remove all distractions . Remove social media apps. Say no to other projects , say no to the people who are not aligned. Put your phone on airplane mode and work on the task for 90 min

Thanks Sushil!

Got New Quarter’s New Clarity for the Mission Crore Club

Awesome, more power to you!

Thankyou so Much sir for Imparting such a wonderful knowledge in a simple way.

You’re welcome Khem!

“How To Craft A 5-Step Business Plan For Next 3 Months”

1). Have to Clear Revenue Goal for next 3 Months – Have a practical numbers for revenue goal for the next 3 months, also have a rough calculation of expenses for 3 months.

2). Need to be Clear on Monthly Theme – Like one month you can focus on Systems, Next month on Teams, Third Month on Content. Similarly you can divide your months on creating courses, improving sales process, automating the systems, Tribe Building, Launching New Ad Campaign, Launching New Ad Traffic Source, etc.

3). Define Top 5 Actions you have to take for each of the Themes (Important Step) – Define top 5 actions for each of your themes for which you have decided to focus on every month. For 3 Months you need to have 15 Actions (5 Actions per Themes for 3 Months).

4). Divide Top 5 Actions in week – Like Month 1, Week 1 – You have to do X Action, Month 1, Week 2 – Y Action, etc. Make a plan the same way for next 3 Months.

5). Get to Work, Remove All Distractions – a. Remove all Social Media Apps from your phone, b. Say “No” to all other Projects which are not aligned to your Goals, c. Say “No” to all the People who are not aligned to your Goals d. Stay Away from the People who suck your Energy and you don’t feel good to be with (Bottom Feeders) e. Start Working in Chunks of 90 Minutes Everyday (If you have to do some task, put your phone in Aeroplane Mode, Block out 90 Minutes, Get Stuff Done)

#ilhdeeplearner #ilhfamily

Thanks for these detailed Notes.

Super stuff Neeraj!

🔥🔥🔥how to plan 5 step new business for next quarter 🔥🔥🔥

Its all about the simplicity …and planning what’s more important things right now ….

1⃣Get clear on your revenue goal from your business …. And be clear about money alocation….. Clear in flow the outflow …. For me its 300000 in three months (I have to earn this 300000 for getting into diamond membership and .paying back education loan)

2⃣Decide monthly theme….. Focus on content …. Tribe building … Launching new ads … Write down top three theme for next three month …. For me it next 5 days for mindmap… Live video content … 5 day or 11 days WhatsApp class… Webinar ….

3⃣ Action focus . write down top 5 action for each theme …. Some action are .. Exploring xmind mindmap software already made my first mindmap…. Setting up basic hardware … Practicing doing class in laptop with pentab… Learn to Create reels and long form content …. Learning paid ads art … Learning to wakeup early😃😃 ….

4⃣ Weekly Action Focus …. Weekly action … For this 5 days create at least 15 more mindmap …..

5⃣ Get to work ….. Remove all distraction …. Say no to all those people who are not align to your goal …. Get stuff done within 90 minutes…..

SIDZ ACTUALLY I AM REMOVING MY DISTARCTION BY CHOOSING TO LISTEN TO YOUR AUDIO … AND CHOOSE TO IMPLEMENT NEW THINGS EVERYDAY …. AS I CREATED MY FIRST CALENDLY LINK TODAY AND INTEGRATED IT WITH ZOOM ….

THESE ARE MY SMALL WINS…

m grateful …

#ilhdeeplearner #ilhfamily #youcancoach

Nice one Meenu. Btw how do you insert those “numbers in the block” inside the comment section?

As I do type comments from my phone …. These are available in emoji section …. You know lots of section are there starting from smile …before flag section you can find these number … Connect with me over mighty network I will show you ….

Thanks, Meenu. I got it.

Thanks Meenu!

Plan a 3 month expense/income

Run a theme for the business for each month, which is a focus area for your business.

Think what are the top 5 todo for each monthly theme

Slot your action for each week of the 5 todo’s

How does it help? You gain clarity for the quarter.

Avoid bottom feeders and time eating activities during this time.

Work in 90 min chunks.

Super! I hope you’ve got all your numbers in place!

Thank you so much Siddharth, I am really bow down infront of you .It gives me a pure idea of how to Structure the business in coming next Quarter -July, August, September 2022 As mentioned as being an Entrepreneur everyday I am doing lots of struggling and juggling with Clients tantrums.

The Plan of my business at Next Quarter-

Simplicity and Clarity. 5 Steps which I crafted after listening your podcast

1.Clear of Revenue Goal How much Income I will generate within the coming 3 months- Expenses – Outflow and Inflow

Income – Rs 3 lakhs per months Expense – Rs 1.5 Lakhs per month

2. Monthly Theme System 1st Month- Focus on Creating Curriculum, Building Team,Creating Videos , Doing lots of R and D.

2nd Month- Creating Web Page , Creating Landing Page , Focus on Email Marketing, Launching New page or Traffic Source to Generate Organic Leads , Start collecting 100 Questions and take a Challenge to complete 50 Videos and 10 Podcasts, Rand D is must must for my growth.

3rd Month- Webselling , Content remodeling if anything require upload in Teachable and Automate the Business. R and D is always there for my Upgrade.

3. Regular Activities-

– 5 Types of Actions

Month 1 – focus on Curriculum – Taking lots of notes 📝 from ILH School – Implementing on my Curriculum – I will work on technical aspects like the Tools too – Focus on Budget of the business to grow

2nd Month – Focus on learning to build Web Page – Focus on learning to building Landing Page -Focus on Creating Groups in Social Media – focus to learn how to create FB Ads ,and Ads in other Social media. – Will work on Instagram Reels to promote the business – Focus on preparing budget as well.

3rd Month- – Focus on Budget – Focus to become more Technical – To upload my Course in Teachable – learn to do Automation – Focus on Business Growth of Enterprenuers by conducting Webinars .

4 . Weekly Focus

1 month – 1- Week Rand D 2- Implement on Curriculum 3- Week Focus on Curriculum Building 4- Curriculum and Rand D and will work on Technical Tools as well

2nd Month – 1 st Week – will work on Building Teams ; Website Building and Landing Page. 2nd Week – Making Videos and will start collecting 100 questions 3rd Week and 4th Week – Will practice providing Webinar to close groups – Collecting Testimonials and Feedback and any changes require will work on it.

3rd Month – 1st Week and 2nd week – Trial – Delegating some technical work to the Professionals.Any changes RAnd D Learning will be there 3rd and 4th Week – – Upload the Course in Teachable and will focus on Automation of the Whole System, Business Meet and focus on reaching Hall of Fame .

5.Get to work – Avoiding Distraction , keeping myself away from people who add no values to my Curriculum. 90 mins daily I will focus on my Studies and Upgrading my goals

#ilhdeeplearner

very detailed notes. This helps a lot to many. Thanks for this.

Excellent Debasmita!

Thank you Siddharth. This Podcast really help me to have a clarity towards achieving goal. It is really an honor to share with everyone. Thanks Samir as well for the encouragement. MPTY.

5 step Business Plan for next 3 months -Plan in advance and focus -Set quarterly goals -Get Inflow and outflow clarity for next 3 months -Define top 5 actions for those 3 themes. -Deside weekly actions for a month. -Form 12 different weekly slots -Clarity gives you power. – Move all distractions. Say no to ideas, people who don’t align with your goals. – start working on your plan.

To the point notes. keep doing.

Step 1: Clear on Your Income Goal. It should be practical and realistic.

Set Income Goal for 3 months Work on Expense for 3 months

Step 2: Clear on Your Monthly Theme. Systematically focus on content, marketing (Ads on Social Media), sales webinars for specific months for that particular quarter.

Step 3: Top actions to be taken for above 2 steps. Top 5 actions.

Work on more webinars… Create and Launch L3 Course for up-selling

Step 4: Weekly Focus.

Month 1 W1, W2 W3, W4

Month 2 W1, W2 W3, W4

Month 3 W1, W2 W3, W4

Step 5: Declutter Yourself with all distraction. Work in 90 mins chunk.

Keep your action and income goals in mind and be realistic to attain the target you set for this quarter from July to Sept.’22.

Awesome Sidz. Amazingly fantastic and crisp knowledge bullet. Very informative and practical. Kudos to your teaching methodology.

Very good Dr.Vishwas!

#ilhdeeplearner #ilhfamily Crafting a 5_step business plan for next 3 months Simplicity n clarity_what’s next ? With this i hv built a multi_ million dollar business with only 3 employees and no office 1. Clear on revenue goal for next 3_months Also clear with expenses for nxt 3 mnths 2.clear on monthly themes 1 mnth_systems 1mnth_teams n processes 1mnth__content 3.most important_top 5 actions for these themes 4.get clear on your weekly focus Mnth 1 _ wk 1 , wk 2 ,wk 3 , wk 4 Clarity gives you power and conviction to move forward Step 5 _ get to work Delete all social media apps Say no to all things and negative people not aligned with your goal Work in chunk of 90 mts Upgrade to Diamond membership Real action happening there !

Nice one Vikram.

Very good Vikram!

Loved doing the 5 steps. Even a 10-minute podcast is filled with lots of action-taking. Love that.

#ILHDeeplerner: Plan your business in 5 steps for 3 month. simplicity and clarity is the main aspect. step-1 Revenue goal _As how much income do you need in 3month like July~Sept’22. Monthly theme _ In knowledge business, your monthly theme for next three month.Q2. step 3 _what are the top 5 theme for next 3 month. step4_ get clear in your weekly theme split action plane if you have done above next quarte is going to be superb. Step 5_ last step get to work. delete all the social media files .say no to every thing and focus on your goal and task. above is power of steps

Excellent Praful!

how to plan 5 step new business for next quarter

Its all about the simplicity and planning

1. Get clear on your revenue goal for next 3 months

2. Monthly theme – – Focus on contents – Improving sales process – Tribe building – Focus on System – Tweaking the team and processes – Creating new courses – Launching new ad campaign – Launching new traffic source Choose top 3 themes for major focus

3. Top 5 actions to for each of these themes

* contents – Research, read & write contents on verious social media channels * Improving sales process – study on organic & inorganic leads creation, visibility, and customer engagement * Tribe building – New Collaboration and Customer engagement, one to one, webinars

4. Time Slot weekly – M1W1 – Research, read & write contents, customer engagement M1W2 – Research, read & write contents, customer engagement M1W3 – Research, read & write contents, customer engagement M1W4 – Research, read & write contents, customer engagement

M2W1 – write contents, study on organic & inorganic leads creation, visibility, and customer engagement M2W2 – write contents, study on organic & inorganic leads creation, visibility, and customer engagement M2W3 – write contents, Leads generation, visibility, and customer engagement M2W4 – write contents, Leads generation, visibility, and customer engagement

M3W1 – write contents, Leads generation, visibility, and customer engagement M3W2 – write contents, Leads generation, visibility, and customer engagement M3W3 – New Collaboration and Customer engagement, one to one, webinars M3W4- New Collaboration and Customer engagement, one to one, webinars

5. Get to work, remove all distractions – say no to projects, peoples not aligned to goal Start working chunks of 90 min everyday complete one task and move to the next task

Many Thanks.

Great Notes and super valuable for reference. Keep posting Vinod. Thanks

I love my mentor and super mentor. I want to surround myself with them. That is a burning desire, and I want their plain action plan for all time to come. And when I spend time with them, I want their meditative best. And today is one such day. But of course I love when they elaborate with lot of insights. Here is my financial goal for -July, August, September 2022

Rs. 1.5 lac per month. this means I shall be HOF by the September 2022 or before. I love the synchronicity of dates, my intention and the amount. I am already spending on tools.

1. My intention right now – to serve and serve and serve my customers with the pain.

I love my clients. They want something very specific, and something they usually not finding solution to. No example, no youtube, no amount of mindset building is solving their problem. The problem of growth. So that is my golden opportunity. I intuitively know how they can reach from point a to point B..

And they will be my repeat customers.

So I need to have fewer customers with the result so that the next stream of customers will be automatic.

2. Already paying for the tools. And as soon as I have 30 customers, I can run FB Ads. Start with Rs. 5000- 10000 per month. That will create 100-200 extra leads. at 10% success rate, 10 people will buy my Rs.5999 /- deal. That makes it Rs. 59,990/- about 5X of Revenue.

July – 10 sales of Rs. 5999/- offer

3. Monthly Theme System 1st Month- Offer package for Rs.5999/- conceptual, Rs. 9999/- for Resume, 5 cover letters,PPT and pictch-deck for them update the time management ebook

Complete 1 Mindset challenge, Landing page design 25 videos- 25 podcasts 20 Insta reels Recreate the mindset ebook

2nd Month- Message planning for 1-1 call (Taking help of the 100 questions) Career growth path. Zeroing down for the desired career Rs. 19,999/- 1000 competency stories – completing the 1000 slides. upload in teachable. Rs.1.5 lac for helping them with the stories. 25 videos-25 podcasts 20 insta reels/posts 1 customer 1.5 lac. 20 customers for Rs. 5999/-

3rd Month- Rigorous marketing. 3 customer/month for $2000. 20 customers for Rs. 5999/-

– 5 Types of Actions Regular sales Rs.199 – 50 25 videos-25 podcasts 20 insta reels/posts More frameworks with smaller offers Regular challenges ( 3 mindset challenges in 3 months)

4 . Weekly Focus Videos – Thumbnails , & podcast LinkedIn Articles Reels 1-1 calls Offer creation

5.Get to work – No distraction. Attending hackathons, Coach calls, regular reading, updating content

Very detailed notes, Sangeeta. Thanks for sharing this. This is helpful to be used as a reference.

Excellent Sangeeta!! truly an honour to have you in our community! MPTY

— How to Craft a 5 step Business plan for next 3 months —

#ILHDEEPLEARNER

Be Clear with your revenue goal How much income do you need to achive for your business (In Flow) Your expenses (Out Flow) List down the regular activities for the next three months that you are going to focus (Monthly theme) Define what are the top 5 actions that you are going to take for each of these themes Get clear on your weekly focus for each month Get to work Remove all distractions Remove all spcial media apps from your phone Say no to all other projects that are do not allign with your goal Say no to all the people who are not allign with your goal Start working in a chunk of 90 minutes

Very good Samir! Thanks for contributing to this thread daily!

Thanks, Siddharth for such valuable topics every day which makes me addicted to listening and grabbing the knowledge from every single topic.

— How to Craft a 5 step Business plan for the next 3 months —

– Be Clear with your revenue goal –How much income do you need to achieve for your business (In Flow) –Your expenses (Out Flow) -List down the regular activities for the next three months that you are going to focus on (Monthly theme) -Define what are the top 5 actions that you are going to take for each of these themes -Get clear on your weekly focus for each month -Get to work –Remove all distractions –Remove all special media apps from your phone –Say no to all other projects that are do not align with your goal –Say no to all the people who are not align with your goal –Start working in a chunk of 90 minutes

My Deep Learnings from the podcast – How to craft a 5 step business plan for next 3 Months ?

#ILHDEEPLEARNING #ILHFAMILY

I am really grateful to Sidz for giving this clear cut point shooter style information.These are like golden nugets for me.Here is what I learnt deeply 👇

Only Focus on the important things.

Step-1 clear on your revenue goal get clear on your expenses how much money want to earn in next 3 month. Total revenue goal -1,50,000 rupees Total expenses -75,000 rupees

Step-2 Get clear on your monthly theme month-1 theme -content marketing month-2 theme-self-free webinars & community building month -3theme -Course creation &sales.

Step-3 Define what are the top five actions you got to take.

1.English speaking practice 2.one speech every single day 3.work on YouTube videos 4.work.on your webinars.structuring 5.Work on your community building

Step-4 Get clear on your weekly focus

each month has four weeks like month 1 week(1,2,3,4)

Like my month number 1 and theme number 1 is content marketing so in the first month there are 4 weeks and each week I have to work on my content marketing skill and so on for the other months and themes.

Clarity gives you the power it’s you the conviction to move forward most entrepreneurs their struggling because they don’t know what to do. They just like everyday they wake up and think about what to do for today I have no plan

And the final step is here

Step-5 Remove all distractions delete all social media apps. Say no to all the projects that do not aligned with my revenue goals. say no to all these people who are not aligning with my goals.

There are some people with whom I don’t feel good .They just suck out my energy .I have to stay away from them for atleast next 3 months. I will block out 90 minutes and put my phone aeroplane mode and get one task done then move to the next.

That’s how I can hit my revenue goals with much more clarity.btw i am a silver member aspiring to be Diamond.

Thank you so much Sidz for giving me unbelievable clarity in my life.Thank you so much.

#ILHDEEPLEARNER #ILHFAMILY

I AM A DEEP LEARNER. MAHESH PRADHAN

Amazing Mahesh!

5 steps business plans for next 3 months. 1)Clear on revenue goal- Clear on inflow and outflow of expenses. Fix the figures of income and expenses for next 3 months. 2) Monthly Theme – Focus on different activities what you have to do in each month. Eg. FOCUS ON System, Creating new courses, Content,Teaching team new processes, Tribe building, creating new ad campaigns, New YouTube ads. 3)Define what top 5 action to be taken. PPT, New platform for the team to be launched, Design team to do the designing work, etc to take action. 4) Slot down in the weekly basis- Top 5 action you slot down. One month -1 week,2nd month 1week, 3rd month 1 week and so on divide action into 12 weeks. 5) Get to work – Say no to all you are not align with the goal. Start working 90 min chunk then move to the next plan. Upgrade yourself. Thank you Sir.

Excellent Trupti!

Thank you Sidz Sir for your wonderful podcast, “5-Steps Business Plan for Next Three Months” which you have summarized in a beautiful manner as under :

1. Clear on your revenue and expenses for the next three months

2. Clear on your monthly themes, one month on systems, one month on team development and next month for content development .

3. Define the five steps one need to take for each of the above themes, 5 actions per themes for 3 months

4. Divide your action in weeks M-1 , W-1, W-2 , W-3, and W-4 M-2, W-1, W-2, W-3, and W-4 M-3 , W-1 W-2 , W-3 and W-4

5. Focus on work and and be away from all destructions like ; removing all social media apps from your system, say no to all other projects and focus on your theme , say no to people who are not aligned to your goals , stay away from people who such away all your energy . Start working every day for at least 90 minutes . Really it is a great challenge to follow these five steps . If followed properly may bring desired fruits in time to come.

Perfect Ramesh! More power to you…

Simple 5 steps to build business for the next months.. Simplicity and clarification for the business Step 1 need to clear revenue Goals ( July, August and September)

Plan for How much Income do you need from business Inflow and outflow of the cash.. Plan for the next 3months income and expenses.. Step2: Theme for the months Step 3: Define what are the top 5 actions that you got to take on the theme.. Step :4 put the actions into week Plan as Month1 week1 action Month 1 week 2 action Month1 week3 action Month1 week3 action …and so till August schedule the months..(12weeks)

Step5 Get to work and remove all distractions.. Say no to people Say no to what is irrelevant Start working in chunks 90mins everyday

Work on planned weeks and execute it.. I have done designing and planning as guided by you Sir

pause and plan

This is really worth planning to execute the plannings and working on it with complete mindset ..

Wants to upgrade for the Diamond membership…..

Thank you Cheers Shanthi Mangilal #ilhdeeplearner

Thanks for sharing Shanti!!

How To Craft A 5-Step Business Plan For Next 3 Months Prioritize things on a monthly and weekly basis What are the essential elements that you need 1) Get clear on revenue goals Total Income-3 Months Total Expense-3 Months 2) Get Clear on the Monthly theme 1st Monthly Theme-Focus on Content Creation 2nd Monthly Theme- Focus on System 3rd Monthly Theme- Focus on Sales and Process automating 3)Define the Top 5 Action 1st Month Theme-Focus on Content Creation- 5 Action 2nd Month Theme-Focus on System- 5 Action 3rd Month Theme- Focus on Sales and Process automating-5 Action 4) Get Clear on Weekly Focus 1st Month Week 1 2nd Month Week 1 3rd Month Week 1 Week 2 Week 2 Week 2 Week 3 Week 3 Week 3 Week 4 Week 4 Week 4 5)Get to work Remove all distraction Delete all social media app on phone Say no to all other projects that do not align with your goals with the revenue goals Say no to a;; those people who do not align with goals Start working in 90 min Everday if you have to complete one task jsut block out 90min put your phone on aeroplane mode and just get stuff done in 90min. Work on the plan. Thank you 🙏Siddharth these day to day adhoc podcast are giving me so much clarity and focus. #ILHDeeplerner

Superb notes taken Vijay!

Wow Sidz!!! Super podcast. As a beginner in your course, its just the dose needed. It has brought super clarity for the next three months.

My notes for today:

Step 1: Estimating Your Income and Expenses for Next 3 Months Income for Three Months | Expenses of Three Months

Step 2 : Top Three Themes per month 1. Course Building 2. Systems Building 3. Ad Campaigns

Step 3 : Top 5 Actions that You need to Take for these themes Month 1: (Course Building) 1) Deciding the Courses 2) Naming the Course 3) Categorizing them into Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3 4) Recording the Courses 5) Finalizing the pricing

Month 2: (Systems Setup) 1) Finalizing the Website 2) LMS 3) Setting up the Community 4) Email Marketing System 5) Managing Traffic System

Month 3: (Ad Campaigns) 1. Creating Ads for different platforms[YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram] 2. Setting up the funnels on each of these platforms 3. Setting Ads Budgets 4. Rehearsing Webinars 5. Launching Webinar Selling

Step 4: Weekly Targets Month 1: Week 1: Point 1 to 3 Week 2 to 4 : Point 4 Week 4 : Point 5

Month 2: Week 1 & 2: Finalizing the Website Week 2 & 3 : Point 2 and 3 Week 4: Point 4 and Point 5

Month 3: Week 1: Point 1 to 3 Week 2 & 3: Point 4 Week 5 : Point 5

Points to Remember: 1) Delete all social media apps from your phone 2) Disconnect with all activities that don’t align with your goal 3) Disconnect with all those people who don’t align with your goal 4) Start working in chunks of 90 minutes

Excellent Kapeel! I love your commitment towards the learning here…

5 Step Business Plan

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.” Benjamin Franklin

Revenue Goal – Quarter (July, August, September)

1. Income – Rs 500000/- 2. Expenses – Rs200000/-

Monthly Theme – Activities

July – Content (Blog, Video, Podcast) | Facebook Live | Outcome – FB Group 500 Members

August – Webinar | Conversions | Email List | Email Nurturing | Outcome – Email List 5000 Subscribers, 12 Conversions per week

September – Inner Circle – 80-100 Members | Understanding Audience | 121 Calls | Outcome – 60 to 100 – 121Calls

Top 5 Actions to be taken for the themes 1. Create Content (Blog, Video & Podcast) 2. Promote Content 3. Go Facebook Live 4. Get few Participants for a 30 day challenge 5. Get Testimonials 6. Running Facebook Ads, Using Google Ads for Traffic to Website 7. Start Doing Webinars – 12 conversions per webinar (12 x 4999 = 59988) x 8 webinars = 8 x 59988 = 479904 Revenue 8. Grow Email List 9. 4 week Email Course for Nurturing 10. Sending One Email per week – VVP 11. Showing up with guests on Facebook Live 12. Getting on to 121 calls 13. Understanding the audience 14. Improving the Course Curriculum 15. Get questions from Inner Circle

Get Clear on Weekly Focus

M1W1 – Content M1W2 – FB Live M1W3 – 30 Day Challenge M1W4 – FB Ads M2W1 – Webinar M2W2 – Conversions M2W3 – Email Course M2W4 – Testimonials M3W1 – 121 Calls M3W2 – Conversions M3W3 – Conversions M3W4 – Testimonials

Get to Work

This exercise is Crazy, Simple, and Mind-Blowing

#ilhfamily #ilhdeeplearner

Superb Santosh!! I’m sure you will break through and achieve these goals!

#ilh deeplearner

1)revenue goal (income, expense and inflow and outflow) 2)monthly theme (top theme for each month, here atleast for 3) 3)define top actions for each of these themes (15 action plan (5*3)) 4) get clear on weekly focus (4 weeks in a month) 5) get to work (say no to all projects, people not aligned with your goal and work in chunks that is 90 minute then move to next step(

Thanks Reema. Keep coming back for more…

Hi Reema, perfect! the key is to keep learning through the journey, these are great insights 🙂

💥 How to Craft a 5 Step Business Plan for Next 3 Months

👉 Plan Income & Expense flow for next three months

(Marketing, Operation, General etc)

👉 Plan Theme for the next three months beside regular activity

Go deep for a Month on one Topic each Month & shuffle for next three Months

(Systems, Team Building, Creating Content, Creating new Course, Improve Sales Process, Automation, Launch New Ads, Tribe building, New Traffic Source)

👉 Curate Top 5 specific actions to complete each monthly theme task (15 task make list)

👉 Get Clear on weekly Focus Split all above 5 task in small result oriented activities

👉 Remove all distraction & get to work

⚡️Say no to all who are not align to this goal No to people ❌ No to projects ❌

💡Create a chunk of 90 Minutes & Complete 1 major task of the day. During this put your phone on Aeroplane mode⚡️

Thanks Sidz for giving us this plan. Here is my take aways with my plan.

5 steps business plan Next 3 months 1) Clarity on Revenue – Income n Expenses Income 100K/month Expense 30K/month 2) Monthly themes July – FB Ads August – One on One Consultation September – Community 3) Top 5 actions for each theme ▫️FB Ads 1) Create Audiences 2) Catchy one min. video Ad 3) Post knowledge base videos on BPA on my FB Community Group 4) Check performance of my ads 5) Take feedback on ads from new joinees

▫️One on One Consultation 1) Collect background info of prospects 2) Prepare questionnaire 3) Do BPA Assessment 4) Provide solution through email 5) Take follow up

4) Weekly focus July W1 – FB Ad contents W2 – FB Ad videos W3 – BPA Knowledge base videos W4 – BPA Knowledge base videos August W1 – Consultation pitch W2 – BPA Consultation video W3 – BPA Assessment W4 – Send reports with solutions

September W1 – Free Master Class for community W2 – Create challenge for community W3 – Rewards to achievers W4 – Approach for 2nd level

5) Get on work – 90 mins. with no Destraction

Thanks Sir for showering your precious knowledge with us.

My Learnings From This Podcast-

Steps 1- Get Clear On Your Revenue Goal- In the next 3 months how much income do you need to bring in your business. Have your inflow and outflow clear.

Step 2- Get Clear On Your Monthly Theme- Decide on what is the theme of the month for example creating new courses, improving the sales process, automating your systems, tribe building etc. List down top 3 themes for each month for the next 3 months.

Step 3- Define what are the top 5 actions that you got to take for each of those months.

Step 4- Get clear on your weekly focus (For each month). Total 12 slots for actions.

Step 5- Get to work, remove all distractions, delete all social media apps from your phones and say no to all other projects and people that do not align with your goals. Start working in chunks of 90 minutes.

This five plan for next three is more of practical approach which will definately give track to travel smoothly. Now implementation is driving point and i will drive through. Thank for insights.

“How To Craft A 5-Step Business Plan For Next 3 Months”

1). Have to Clear Revenue Goal for next 3 Months – Have a practical numbers for revenue goal for the next 3 months, also have a rough calculation of expenses for 3 months.

2). Need to be Clear on Monthly Theme – Like one month you can focus on Systems, Next month on Teams, Third Month on Content. Similarly you can divide your months on creating courses, improving sales process, automating the systems, Tribe Building, Launching New Ad Campaign, Launching New Ad Traffic Source, etc.

3). Define Top 5 Actions you have to take for each of the Themes (Important Step) – Define top 5 actions for each of your themes for which you have decided to focus on every month. For 3 Months you need to have 15 Actions (5 Actions per Themes for 3 Months).

4). Divide Top 5 Actions in week – Like Month 1, Week 1 – You have to do X Action, Month 1, Week 2 – Y Action, etc. Make a plan the same way for next 3 Months.

5). Get to Work, Remove All Distractions – a. Remove all Social Media Apps from your phone, b. Say “No” to all other Projects which are not aligned to your Goals, c. Say “No” to all the People who are not aligned to your Goals d. Stay Away from the People who suck your Energy and you don’t feel good to be with (Bottom Feeders) e. Start Working in Chunks of 90 Minutes Everyday (If you have to do some task, put your phone in Aeroplane Mode, Block out 90 Minutes, Get Stuff Done)

Good takeaways!

Pure clarity from your end regarding the 3 months Action plan, Implimentaion is from my end. Thank you sid.

will have to write my revenue goals again & look at them everyday. And yes planning everyday with high productive tasks is important. Distractions are to be minimized specially social media.

1month : 5 actions -) – Do reels – Create contents – do research of target market – post regularly – take review 2month – launch pdf – create leads – start selling – landing page – growth of self 3month – do 121 session – start podcasting – make YouTube videos – collabs – automate tools

Good points!

That was a great time management tool. 1. Have started spending on tools. 2. Following Sid’s hackathon to the T. Want to be the freedom finisher. 3. Building all my pages, website, , funnels, courses, etc which is going to be a massive task for me . 4. Implementing, developing connections, setup, 5. Dividing the focus week wise so that I don’t get overwhelmed. Thank you sid 🤗

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