The 1 Page

Business Plan
Guidebook

By Marc Allen
 THE POWER OF A ONE-PAGE BUSINESS PLAN

“If you can’t write your idea

on the back of my business card,
you don’t have a clear idea.”
— David Belasco, Producer

The process is such a simple one.

You create a clear goal in mind. You dare to dream your dream, and dare to
focus on it, to imagine it coming into being.

Summarize your plan: Make it one simple goal you can write on the back of a
business card.

Take a single sheet of paper and write your goal at the top. Then let your plan
spill out onto the page. It doesn’t have to be a great plan. Keep it brief and
simple. The plan becomes a powerful tool that reprograms your subconscious
mind.

Some brilliant person (I forget who) said your subconscious mind is like an
incredibly powerful five-year-old. Little kids will believe anything you tell them —
they’ll believe there are monsters under the bed! You’re subconscious mind will
believe anything you tell it.

It you keep telling yourself that life is a struggle, it’s hard to succeed, money
doesn’t grow on trees, etc., etc., etc., that’s exactly what your subconscious
accepts to be true.

But if you start telling yourself that you have a goal, you have a dream, and you
are now moving toward its creation, your subconscious mind will accept that too,
and it’ll get to work and start showing you exactly what steps to take to start
realizing your dream.

That is the power of your subconscious mind. It works for you in whatever way
you suggest, following your instructions.

You may not need more details. Just take a sheet of paper, write your goal at the
top, and let the plan spill out.

If more details are helpful, though, I’ll repeat some of what I wrote in the
Visionary Business Guidebook:

1 Copyright 2018, Marc Allen

 YOUR ONE-PAGE PLAN

This is a powerful key to success:

For every major goal,

write a short, simple plan.
Summarize it clearly in one or two pages.

So many people never discover this key, and think that writing a plan
means creating a 40-page document with five-year projections of income
and expenses and cash flow. A detailed business plan is useful if you need
to raise money from certain sources, but most often, a plan that lengthy
isn’t necessary at all.

One or two pages usually does it. Keep it short. This powerful tool is
for your use. The single most important thing your written plan does is to
imprint upon your powerful subconscious mind that you desire this, and
you are putting it in concrete words on paper so your subconscious can get
to work on it.

As a book title says, ​Write it down and make it happen​.

Keep the plan as uncomplicated as possible, and keep your writing

simple as well, preferably in language a child could understand: The simpler
it is, the more powerfully it impacts your subconscious mind.

A one-page plan is powerful,

because it sets your powerful subconscious mind
in motion.

2 Copyright 2018, Marc Allen

 YOUR WRITTEN PLAN IS YOUR MAP OF THE FUTURE

Write a short, one- or two-page plan for each one of the major goals
on your list.

If you can, I recommend that you first write the plan in your own way,
without imposing any kind of structure on it. If you prefer more of a structure,
though, a more structured plan is provided next, and you can use one or both of
the simple types of architecture suggested in these plans.

But first, try to write your own plan in your own words — whatever words come to
mind. Let your subconscious mind show you what it wants as you write that one,
single page. Keep it simple!

You must simplify.

You must make the complex simple,
and then make it work.
— I.M. Pei, Architect

3 Copyright 2018, Marc Allen

 A SIMPLE OUTLINE FOR A ONE OR TWO-PAGE PLAN

Most of the time, I write my plans on a single blank sheet of paper without
imposing any structure at first, just seeing what develops. Put the goal at the top,
then list the obvious steps you need to take to reach that goal, stated as simply
as possible.

Sometimes I use the following simple outline:

List and cover these three things:

Mission:​ Your broadest, highest reasons for doing it in the first place. (It’s good
to keep reminding ourselves of this.)

Goals: ​The steps you intend to take to fulfill your mission.

Strategies:​ The steps you will take to reach your goals.

4 Copyright 2018, Marc Allen

 TURN YOUR DESIRES INTO INTENTIONS

A one-page plan turns your desire for success into an ​intention​. As soon as you
intend something, the universe says ​Yes​. And it starts throwing ideas at you: You
could start here; you could start there. You could do it this way, you could do it
that way. Many plans will develop their own multi-pronged strategies: First you try
this, then that, and if those don’t work, you go on to another possibility.

Sooner or later, something starts working. Sooner or later, you reach that goal.

As soon as you intend something, you start to see opportunities where before
you saw only problems and obstacles. You realize there are opportunities
everywhere.

There’s a fascinating principle at work here:

What we think about expands.

If our thoughts are focused primarily on our problems and obstacles and
shortcomings, those things expand and become even greater. The more we turn
our thoughts to what we want to do, be, and have in our lives, the more we let
ourselves imagine living the life of our dreams, the more those things expand in
our lives.

Once your intention becomes solid, solutions to problems become obvious — or

else what were formerly problems simply don’t matter any more, and become
irrelevant. Obstacles dissolve, or else you find a way around them.

In the simple act of writing a one-page plan,

the architecture of your success is revealed to you.

5 Copyright 2018, Marc Allen

 WRITE YOUR PLAN

Write your goal, big and bold, and then write in your own words a
plan to reach your goal. See if you can do it on just one page — though
it’s fine to run longer than that. Be flexible, with any and all of this material.
Trust your instincts; feel free to break any rules I may seem to be providing.

Dare to dream, then dare to make a plan on paper — and prepare yourself for
some truly remarkable results!

6 Copyright 2018, Marc Allen