Concept
The one-page business plan
The one-page business plan is five lines: what you sell, who buys it, what it costs them, how they find out about it, and how you get paid. It exists so that you can see the whole business at once and notice which line is still blank.
Guillebeau's founders wrote nothing longer, and Rework would say even a page is generous, because a plan written before there is a customer is a guess. The one page is not for a bank or an investor; it is a tool for the owner. Filling it in reveals the gap: most first-time owners can write the first line and the third and stare at the fourth, how customers find out, which is where the next week's work is. The page is rewritten as the business learns, and later becomes the middle of the first-year plan, with real numbers replacing the guesses.
A real-life example
A translator's five lines: legal documents under twenty pages in 48 hours; small law firms and exporters in Istanbul; a fixed fee per document; found through ten former clients and their referrals; paid in advance by transfer. The fourth line took a week to fill in; the others took an hour.
How to use it
- 1Write the five lines in one sitting; leave blank what you do not know.
- 2The blank line is this week's work.
- 3Rewrite the page whenever a customer teaches you something.