Write a Business
Plan Challenge.
3. Company
You’ve reached the third step of creating your success plan for 2022. Today let’s write about your company. If you are a freelancer about to scroll down this post, wait, because it will be as valuable for you. If you want to scale and grow your freelance business next year, it will require thoughtful planning.
1. Finances
If you have an accountant, sit down with them and go over your financial model. They will help you with the process. If you are doing it alone, here is an easy way:
- Go over all your business spendings, including team salaries, operational costs, capital expenses and write them down for the year ahead.
- Write down all your revenue sources. The easiest way to calculate a rough estimation of revenues is to take a number of clients (sales) you have each month and multiply them by the average check amount. For example, if you have 4 clients who pay $250 a month, your revenues are $1000. But take into account that each client has a lifetime, meaning that some % of them will leave and you need to attract new ones (we’ve talked how to do that last week).
- Compare the expenses and revenues. Do the numbers make sense or do you need more revenue? There are 2 ways to get it: either have more clients or increase the average check.
If you have want to give more thoughts to your finances, find a free financial model template you can fill in to see the whole picture here.
2. Scaling
During the first task of this challenge you came up with your dream income for December 2022. Now it’s time to put that number into your financial model spreadsheet and find a way to get there.
For example, you now earn $1000, but you said you wanted $5000. Go ahead, type that number into your projections and gradually increase it each month by $333. Does your business have enough recourses to attract and serve more clients each month? (For freelancers the question is do you have enough time in your workday?). If yes, - wonderful!
If not, you need to think about hiring a team. Delegate some of the tasks to increase your company productive capacity, but remember to add the costs of the team in the expenditures. Now look at the numbers again to make sure hiring a team actually increases your income and gradually build up your business to reach your goals. If you found that you are going to hire a team, lay out who's in charge of what in your company.
Hiring and running a team is a whole big topic, which you will discover as you start doing it next year. For now, just look at the numbers and make sure they look realistic and that you didn’t forget anything.
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