The Business Plan You Were Taught Is Not the One You Need

Porter's Five Forces, a SWOT analysis, thirty pages with a market section. None of it tells you what to do on Monday.

If you've ever gone through the exercise of writing a business plan, at some point a quiet voice said this is a waste of time, and you are never going to open this again.

You were right. You did not open it again. That's because the plan you were taught is useless for running a boutique firm.

What you were taught, and who it was for

Porter's Five Forces. SWOT analysis. Strength and weakness sections and a three year forecast.

Those tools are not stupid. They were built for large organisations allocating capital, and for justifying a decision to a board or a lender. That's not what we're doing it for.

The plan you were taught was written for someone else to read. Its purpose was to explain and to justify. The plan you need has one reader, and one job. It helps you win better clients and keep more of the money they pay you.

Start from the number that actually bothers you

It does not start with a market analysis. It starts with whatever made you think about any of this in the first place. For most owners that is take-home pay, or hours, or both.

So take the take-home pay, and follow it back.

It is less than it should be, given the work and the risk. Why. Because the hours are maxed. When a soft month arrives, the lever you reach for is more hours, and there is not much left in that lever.

So if working more is off the table, look at what the hours are actually earning. Not the rate card. The effective rate, which is what actually gets collected per hour you work, after write-offs. And the harder version: if the firm paid you a market salary for the lawyering you personally do, what would the profit be.

That effective rate comes from what you charge, which is set either by what the work is genuinely worth to the client, or by what the client believes it is worth. And what the work is worth depends on who you act for.

That chain runs back to who you act for and what you sell them.

That is what the business plan you need is for. It is a small set of decisions sitting at the root of that chain. In other words - strategy.

The decisions at the root

There are seven decisions.

What problem do we solve. Not a list of your services. Your services are what you do. The problem is what the client is trying to get away from, or get to. Clients do not buy contracts, they buy outcomes. Write it in the client's words, not in legal language.

The problem is set by the client's situation, not by the area of law. A shareholders' dispute for a founder trying to exit is not the same problem as one for a family who still have to work together afterwards.

How you work it out: what are you genuinely good at, which clients can pay a premium price for exactly that, and what problems do those clients have.

Who is our ideal client. Not a practice area, and not "businesses". Those are categories, and a category is not a client. A real profile answers four things.

Who they are. The type of client, their size or revenue, their stage, and what they can genuinely afford to pay.

What they want, and what worries them. The outcome they are chasing, and the thing that keeps them up at night.

What makes them act now. The trigger event that has them calling this month rather than next year. Most owners can describe their client type but have never worked out the trigger, which is why marketing runs all year and the phone rings randomly.

Who you do not act for. The ones who haggle on price, who cannot really afford you, who need constant hand-holding, who resist every change. Naming these is worth as much as naming the good ones, because it tells your intake what to turn away.

What is our value proposition. What the client actually gets from you. It names who it is for, the problem, and the outcome you move them to. Most attempts describe the activity rather than the outcome, which is why they sound like everyone else.

What makes us different. Why a client picks you over the firm down the road. Expertise, service and value do not count, because every firm claims them. The test: could your closest competitor write your exact sentence. If they could, it is not a difference.

How do we service them. The way the work actually gets done, and what the client experiences while it happens. Whatever you promised has to hold on the twentieth matter, not just the first. If the promise is speed, something in the firm has to reliably produce speed. Walk one matter end to end and see whether the promise survives it.

How do we price it. What you charge, and more importantly what you base it on. Value-based fees, hourly rate, gut feel, or whatever the client accepts. Start from what the outcome is worth to that client rather than what the work costs you to produce. Your cost is the floor, not the basis. And watch your effective rate rather than your charge-out rate.

What is our key offer message. The three or four things you want every prospect to hear and remember. Name the client, name the pain, describe the outcome, remove the friction. "We provide expert commercial legal advice to businesses" could be anyone, for anyone. "We help founder-led services businesses de-risk their contracts and employment structures so they can scale or exit without legal friction, with fixed-fee packages and 72-hour turnaround on standard matters" tells the right client exactly what they get. It also tells the wrong client to look elsewhere. That is the point.

Where you actually sit right now

Four questions. Answer them honestly, in your head.

One. Describe your ideal client in one sentence. Did that come out crisp, or rough, or not really at all.

Two. Is there a defined offer, a clear thing you sell at a clear price, or is every matter scoped from scratch.

Three. How do prices get set. Value-based fixed fees, hourly rate, gut feel per matter, or whatever the client accepts.

Four. How often do you take on work you know you probably shouldn't. Rarely, sometimes, or more than you would like.

If those came out rough, that is not a marketing problem, and it is not a systems problem. It is the root of the chain (i.e. a strategy problem), and it is where the plan starts.

I have all of this as a one page template. Reply to this email and I will send it through.

More next Tuesday,

Gordon