Growth & Customers

How to develop a business plan for self-employment

A solid business plan can be the difference between self-employment that thrives and one that stalls. But what it looks like depends on whether you’re freelancing, contracting, or consulting—here’s how to tailor yours to fit.

Published 8 November, 20144 min read Share

Being self-employed can mean a dozen different things.  

You might be a freelancer juggling multiple clients, an independent contractor tied to a single company for months at a time, a consultant building a practice around your own expertise, or a sole trader running a small business. Each comes with its own risks, income patterns, and ways of finding work, which means a generic, one-size-fits-all business plan often misses what actually matters for your situation. 

The good news is that you don’t need a different plan from scratch for each type of self-employment. The core building blocks—your goals, your market, and your finances—stay the same. What changes is what you should emphasize and where the real risks and opportunities sit. 

If you haven’t written a business plan before, our guide on how to write a business plan covers the fundamentals. Here, we’ll focus on how those principles apply to different types of self-employed work.

Key takeaways

• You don’t need a different business plan from scratch for each type of self-employment — the core building blocks of goals, market, and finances stay the same; what changes is where the risk sits and what your plan should emphasise.
• Freelancers should plan around irregular income and client concentration — niche down on a specific client and problem, build a cash buffer for slower months, and address any client making up more than a third of your income.
• Independent contractors should plan for the end of the contract from day one — non-renewal is the biggest risk, so negotiate rates as a business rather than a placement and keep a light pipeline running while you’re still engaged.
• Consultants, coaches, and trainers should price for outcomes rather than hours — narrow positioning and visibility built over time win the right clients, while leverage such as productised offers stops the business depending entirely on you.
• Sole traders should work backwards from costs to a price that protects margin — demand swings, inventory or capacity, and repeat custom matter more here than personal brand, since keeping a customer costs less than winning a new one.

 Here’s what this article covers:

1. Mission Statement

A short mission statement of 30 words or so should succinctly state why your company exists, what services it will provide, and to whom.

2. Business Goals & Objectives

This section should describe the top three to five goals and objectives you have for your business. For example:

• To achieve at least a 30% increase in annual revenues every year
• To make more than £50,000 annually

3. Products and Services Offered

This section should list the full range of products and services you will provide. For example: one-to-one business coaching, career coaching, executive coaching, leadership development programmes, team coaching, corporate training, workshops, seminars, coaching skills training and a how-to book on tips for managers as coaches.

4. Target Market

This section should provide details about your ideal target client. In my experience, this is the area that most people new to self-employment need most help with. They feel resistant to focus on a specific market because they enjoy working with all kinds of people on all kinds of projects. But by trying to market to everyone, they dilute their message and, in their attempt to reach everyone, end up appealing to no-one.

5. Competition

A competitor is anyone or anything a prospect can and will spend money on that they perceive will achieve the same or similar results and benefits as you state that your services will provide.

Consequently, while the most obvious competition will be other individuals and business doing what you do, you may also have competition from other individuals and companies who offer products and services designed to address the same issues you help your clients address.

6. Professional Background

If you are your product or the person providing the service, people are hiring you for you – your style, your experience, your background. So be honest about what you say.

They are also hiring you because they think you will be a better fit for them than any other individual so be wise about the points you want to emphasise in your professional background.

7. Sales & Marketing Strategy

Here is where you list all the different marketing techniques and strategies you will use to identify prospects and land new clients.

8. Financial Forecasts

This is often the scariest part of writing a business plan. One of the reasons start-up businesses fail is lack of available funding to keep the business going. This section should include the following:

• The funds you currently have available (cash in hand for expenses)
• A 12-month timetable in which you estimate how much revenue you will bring in per month
• A comprehensive list of all expenditure
• A simple profit-and-loss (P&L) statement in which you subtract your anticipated expenses from your anticipated revenues. This should give you a good idea of how much money you need to have on hand to properly fund your business.

Often, the easiest way to write up and keep track of these financial statements is by using Excel or another spreadsheet programme, but the most important part is the actual process of calculating the numbers.

Browse more topics from this article

• Creating a business plan
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