Developing a Business Plan

If you want to be a professional writer, then you should seriously consider treating your work as a business. And that means developing a business plan.

As a newbie to the professional writing industry, you probably won’t need a complex plan; you may even be able to scratch out a totally adequate business plan on the back of an envelope. But if you’ve got some experience under your belt, or you have major ambitions, you’ll benefit from a more robust, comprehensive, and heavily detailed plan.

Either way, having a business plan gives you a road map for what to focus on, what to do next, what to expect in the future, how to handle the unexpected, and how to assess the progress you are making toward your goal of becoming a successful professional writer.

 

What Will You Do?

The first part of your business plan should contain a simple but complete, high-level statement of your planned professional activities:

• What products and services will you offer?
• To whom will you offer them?
• How will you make yourself known to these potential buyers?
• What performance milestones will you aim for?

Do some clear thinking as you write this part of your plan, but be ready to come back to it with refinements after you figure out the details in the sections to follow.

 

Products and Services

In this section, try to describe the work you expect to be doing in more detail.

Start by naming and characterizing each of your products and services: scripts, novels, booklets, plays, speeches, etc. Then specify the relevant details, such as word lengths, audiences, and formats.

While you’re at it, try to identify the benefits of your products and services. What’s special about you and your offerings? Why would someone want to hire you or buy from you? What differentiates your products and services from those of your competitors?

Incidentally, if you think you don’t have any competitors, you’re almost certainly wrong. You probably haven’t found them because you haven’t done enough research into the market(s) you plan to enter.

 

Sales and Marketing

In this section of your business plan, try to include all the important details about how you will obtain paying clients.

• How much will you charge for each product or service?
• Will you advertise? Where? How often?
• Will you participate in trade shows or display at conventions? Which ones?
• Will you mail or email sales and marketing materials? To whom? Saying what?
• Will you make personal connections within your network? Where? When? How?
• Will you pay for sales and marketing help from an agent? A publisher? A collaborator?
• Will you develop a web presence? How? With what sales and marketing messages?

Try to list, describe, and specify enough details so that you could—if you wish—simply hand off this information to a sales and marketing agency and afterward feel confident that they will implement your plans as you intended.

 

Practical Matters

When starting a business, it may be beneficial to work through several practical matters that will effectively translate your dreams and rough ideas into a tangible business entity. Such matters as:

• Where and when will you work?
• Who will do your billing? Accounting? Taxes?
• What will be the name of your business?
• How will it be organized: as a sole proprietorship, a limited liability company, or a corporation. And what state will it be registered in?
• Who will own the business?
• How will you ensure compliance with applicable laws and get answers to the inevitable legal questions?
• Are you a party to contracts or agreements (non-disclosure, non-compete) that limit your ability to do what you are planning? If so, how will you handle these limitations?
• Where will you obtain start-up capital?

 

Management and Decision-Making

Who will run your business? You alone, or you with others, or just these others? What authority will management have, and not have, to impact your everyday work and your ability to make deals (and other business arrangements)?

Will you have any advisers, partners, or collaborators? What influence will these people have on your work, deal-making, and business activities?

 

Growth

What’s your plan for growing this new business? Will it always be just you, or will you bring in others as contractors, employees, partners, coaches, or people in other roles to help you grow your business?

How will you measure your business’s growth? In terms of income? Number of people doing the work? Number of items sold? Some other way? Remember to measure what is important to the future of your professional writing business.

Include goals in your business plan that emphasize the success you’d like to achieve as a professional writer.

 

Finances

In the financial section, project the amount of money you will need to operate your business. These will be yearly projections for the first five years.

Once you’ve calculated these expense figures, add up the money you expect to earn as a professional writer. Take into account the prices you will charge and the quantity of products or services you expect to sell each year. Since you can’t nail this down to the exact dollar, work with a range of likely minimum to likely maximum income for the first five years you’ll be in business. Also list cash on hand, loans, investor capital, and equity.

Now compare your anticipated income against your anticipated expenditures. How long will it take until you break even? How long after that until you recoup the money you spent and make a profit and also save for retirement?

Be cognizant that your new business might accumulate significant value as it grows. For example, any assets it owns might become valuable, including its contracts, its relationships with solid customers, its inventory and unspent earnings, its real estate or other property, and so forth.

All this work to develop a business plan can be fun, as you run through all the possible scenarios and contemplate your potential success as a professional writer, as well as meaningful.

If you don’t get the business plan right, you’ll be depending on luck for your success. And it’s highly unlikely you’ll be the one in a million writer who lucks into success as a professional. If you do get your business plan right, though, your chances of success take an immediate leap into the realm of the possible, the do-able, and even the likely.

 

One Final Thought

Many people make the mistake of thinking that just by stating a goal, or writing it up as part of a business plan, that you must achieve it. Totally untrue. Any goals you state—and intend to achieve—are simply distant milestones to help guide your direction. To achieve them, you must actually do the necessary hard work and do it as well as you can.

 

Robert Moskowitz is an award-winning independent professional writer who has written and sold millions of words in just about every format over five decades. He instinctively sees the big pictures, breaks each one down into coherent slices, meaningfully prioritizes and sequences those slices, and then executes the tasks inherent in each slice in very productive ways. Put more simply, Robert knows how to succeed as an independent writer, covering all the bases from soliciting assignments to delivering polished work, from pricing jobs to budgeting and managing personal finances, from organizing a conducive office environment to establishing and following sensible guidelines regarding life, work, and productivity. Having done all this, and having paid attention to how he did it, Robert is now in a position to pass along what he knows to others.