Creating an Annual One-Page Business Plan

A simple business plan can help keep your business on track and able to adapt throughout the year. Take the time now with this resource to set up a one-page business plan so you can plan ahead for changes you know about and be prepared for unforeseen adjustments along the way.

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Business plans—or plans of any kind—can be invaluable in keeping your business on track throughout the year. These plans should be living documents that you refer to often. They should also be adaptable and flexible to fit the ever-changing needs of your business and the market it's within (just think of the many changes that you’ve had to make over the past couple of years—that was you adapting your business plan!). There’s no one set formula for business plans, either. Business plans can take several different forms and have different purposes—everything from helping to plan your year, to charting a course for the next five years, or even helping you plan to expand your business. In this guide, we’re going to focus on a simple approach to a one-page, one-year business plan to help keep you on track in a way that is easy to follow and maintain throughout the year.

The business plan here is a slimmed-down version that will be easy to update and use each year. It’s designed to concisely communicate your goals, driven by your current realities—similar to a roadmap. It is best suited for smaller businesses. Larger businesses or those that are opening a new location or business will likely find that a strategic plan or a more extensive business plan will be more valuable.

Building Your Plan

The plan can be developed in four steps listed below.

Step 1: State Your Value Proposition

Your value proposition is simply answering the question, “Why you?”

You can think about your past year(s) and the feedback you’ve received that demonstrates why families love your program. If you have employees of any kind, think about what you do to ensure that they remain happy and stay with your business, and how you attract new people as needed.

Your value proposition can be important because it reminds you of why families love your services. This is important for you to keep in mind as the business owner, and to use as you talk to other families. It provides a concise reminder of what you do in your business. Value propositions help frame some of the important business decisions that you will make such as how you set your ratesand promote your services to potential clients. You could write pages and pages about these ideas, but in this case, we recommend you use a very simple format to create your value proposition. Specifically, we’d like you to answer three questions:

Where do you serve families? This could be in your neighborhood or in your city. Perhaps your reach is wide—across a county or region.
What services do you offer? Do you support prenatal clients only, or do you also provide postpartum care? Do you specialize in infant care, sibling support, or other stages of family life? Clearly defining the range of services you provide helps families understand how you can best meet their needs.
What is it that parents love most about your business? What is it that makes them come back or recommend you to others? This might be you personally. It could be your location, proximity to them, or other reasons. There’s no good or bad answer to this; if you feel like you’re not sure, don’t hesitate to ask your clients. It never hurts to say that you are planning to further improve your services and would like their feedback. Very simply, this could be a conversation a where you say, “Hey, I’m working on how I can improve this year. I’m just curious, what do you like most about my services? Is there anything you wish I did better?

These questions, though very simple, can be incredibly helpful in your planning. By starting with your clients, you are building your plan on the most important foundation—the people who are paying for and using your services. They are not only your clients, but typically they’re your best salespeople. Many doulas rely on referrals from former clients and those they trust.

Step 2: Assess Your Current Situation

The next step is taking a comprehensive look at your business performance and feedback and writing a basic list of what is working well versus what you may need to improve. Again, this doesn’t have to be pages and pages. To perform this basic assessment, you will need some data to rely on:

Feedback from families and
Business financials, including a monthly budget and a 12-month cash flow. These tools will allow you to know what financial demands there are. Remember to be realistic on both for better planning.

We recommend that you first look at the feedback you got from your families; then review your financials and answer some simple questions:

What do families like most? What do they like least?
When you look at your financials, are you going to be profitable? Are you going to make money by the end of the year?
When looking at your income forecast, are there any months where you are worried because of a lack of clients? Are you going to have several clients giving birth during a specific timeframe?

By answering these questions, you are not only helping to create your plan for the year, but you are also creating talking points to use as you run your business throughout the year. When you assess the information, some questions you may want to ask are:

What is going to keep you profitable throughout the year — do you need more clients mid-year?
Will some families finish using your services? Do you have a list of potential clients? If you’re anticipating growth or are at capacity, do you want to consider expanding?
What do parents want and need? How will you adjust your services to meet those needs? Are there ways that you can easily meet those needs?

Step 3: Conduct a SWOT Analysis

Once you have assessed your current situation, you will want to perform an analysis of the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) of your business. This is a simple yet very effective way to categorize ideas. Through the SWOT analysis, you will divide your data into four quadrants: whether a factor is positive or negative, and whether it is about the present or the future. The Strengths and Weaknesses are the company’s current positive and negative characteristics. The Opportunities and Threats are potential future factors that can either positively affect or negatively hinder impact and growth.

If you have employees, performing a SWOT analysis as a team will be most effective. If you are a business owner without employees, consider a conversation with a friend or colleague you trust who knows your business well. Using a whiteboard or large sheet of paper will allow your team to collect and visualize your ideas. Take your whiteboard or paper and divide it into four boxes labeled Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. The goal of this activity is to have a clear vision in each of the areas and to use this insight as you build your business plan.

Each member of the team should contribute several statements that correspond to each area. These statements can be written on sticky notes that you attach to the corresponding area on your board. A strength could be, “I am willing to travel,” and a weakness could be, “Potential for burnout.” An opportunity could be, “Growing awareness and demand for doula services” and a threat could be, “Potential liability issues and the cost of liability insurance.” Once your statements for each area are posted, you should discuss together which statements are the most relevant. Those relevant statements will provide you with a clear perspective on your organization and allow you to focus as you move to the next step of building your business plan.

Step 4: Use Your Information to Build Your Plan

The last step is building out your plan. We’re going to take you step-by-step through the process, starting with reviewing the past year and then examining how this year may go. From this, you will find goals to undertake to maintain or strengthen your business.

Outside of stating your value proposition, here are the suggested components of your business plan:

Your clients (families): Understanding what you want to do to support them for the year.
Your market (external factors impacting your goals)
Your finances: A financial forecast helps you know where you’re headed financially during the year and what it will take to get there.
Your SMART goals (holds you accountable): You will create some goals related to what you plan to undertake for the year. Make sure they are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound). You want your goals to be reasonable and pared down as tightly as possible. (You can use a SMART Goals Worksheet independently or with a business consultant.)

Business Plan Template

Introduction & Value Proposition

You are now ready to use the plan template to build your plan. First, you developed your value proposition, the “Why you?” You’ve gathered valuable feedback from your families and staff and can insert it in a very simple sentence such as:

“I/We serve families in [neighborhood/ region], [neighborhood/region], and neighborhood/ region] through services such as [specific doula services, e.g., prenatal care, birth support, postpartum care]. What our clients love most about working with us is [value/characteristic 1], [value/characteristic 2], and [value/characteristic 3].”

This sentence is very simple, but it’s not simplistic; this will remind you throughout the year why families choose your doula services and continue to recommend you. It will help you stay connected to the unique value you bring to your community while also serving as a foundation for talking with potential clients and inspiring others about the meaningful work you do.

Our Families

A successful \business will have to be committed and have a plan in place to attract and retain its customer base. Here is where you state what you plan to do to support families in the year ahead that will allow you to sustain, or even grow, your business. This should be informed by the feedback you collected about what families like and what you can improve on.

Based on feedback we’ve collected, families are looking for [feature 1], [feature 2], and [feature 3]. We are able to meet these needs because we [have the list of features, are located in an in-demand area, have built a client base, etc.]. To further meet the needs of our families and [maintain or increase] client numbers, our plan is to [added/enhanced feature 1], [added/enhanced feature 2], and [added/ enhanced feature 3].

Our Staff

A successful business will be committed and have a plan in place to attract and retain staff members, and volunteers if applicable. Here is where you state what you plan to do to support your staff for the year in a way that allows you to sustain, or even grow, your business. This should be informed by the feedback that you’ve collected about what staff like and what you can improve upon.

If you don’t have staff, you should think about how you support yourself and what commitments you make to yourself every day that will help you sustain your business in the long run.

Our Market

Here is where you will enter your SWOT analysis that was explained above.

Our Financial Plan

You want to include your financial forecast. This includes your annual budget and 12-month cash flow analysis.

Keep an eye on this throughout the year and make sure that your predictions are staying on target. If they are not, ensure you understand why and adjust accordingly. Your financial forecast should include any anticipated increases in enrollment and revenue. It should also reflect the staffing levels, compensation (for yourself and others, if applicable), and benefits that you anticipate.

Our Goals

This is the final section of the business plan. This section states what exactly you intend to do to improve or expand your business, based on the information that you gathered and assessed, and by what date. This gives life to your plan, makes it real, and lets you know specifically what you’ll need to do. You can choose to follow the SMART goal format or another simple tool, the three-element format: 1) the what, 2) the how, and 3) how you’re going to know that it worked. Both are simple formats that will keep you on track and accountable to get things done.

Example SMART Goal

If you know that you want to increase your client base mid-year to account for changes in demand, you might say:

“I will reach out to my current and past clients and ask them for referrals so I can secure five new clients by August 1st.”

This sentence outlines how you will gain new clients—by connecting with current and past clients—and what specific action you’ll take—ask for referrals. Your goal is to increase your client base by five, and you will know your strategy worked if you have five new clients by August 1st.

Your goals can be very clear-cut and straightforward, such as:

"I will purchase new birthing tools this year," or "I will purchase new birthing tools by the end of July."

Other times, there may be goals that you may benefit from working with a business coach to realize. For example:

“We will work with X person to create a marketing plan to attract new families so that we can replace the five families who no longer need my services this year.”

In the second case, you’re committing to doing something, though you don’t necessarily have all the answers yet because it’s going to take some time to figure out how you should market: you might need to create a website, talk to families, or maybe provide some incentives to your existing families for referrals. In this case, you’re making the commitment and will keep yourself accountable to your goal by having it written down.

Example Stretch Goal

We recommend that you also take some time to think about one stretch goal, which is a goal that will push you a little further to help grow your doula business over time. The stretch goal can be something more complex, such as expanding your client base to serve more Medicaid clients, or it could be something simpler, such as setting aside X% of revenue for professional development to enhance your services.

“We are going to create a postpartum care kit for clients that includes essential recovery and care items, and we’re going to develop and distribute it within two years.

As you can see, this example stretch goal goes beyond the annual plan. Stretch goals can help you stay on track and keep you thinking about what you need to do now and the next steps. The stretch goal is an outlier because it may not be done within a year; however, it’s good to remind yourself what you’re going to do through that stretch goal, why you’re doing it, and when.

Disclaimer

The information contained here has been prepared by Civitas Strategies® and is not intended to constitute legal, tax, or financial advice. The Civitas Strategies® team has used reasonable efforts in collecting, preparing, and providing this information, but does not guarantee its accuracy, completeness, adequacy, or currency. The publication and distribution of this information are not intended to create, and receipt does not constitute, an attorney-client or any other advisory relationship. Reproduction of this information and recording of this content (including the use of AI) are expressly prohibited. Only noncommercial uses of this work are permitted.