A one-page plan that survives contact with month one

Long plans are a way of putting off the first phone call. The plan a backer wants fits on one page, takes an afternoon to write, and is mostly numbers you will later be held to. It has five parts: the business in a sentence, three named target types, pricing and costs, the first twelve weeks in numbers, and the two targets that will actually decide whether the desk is working. Everything else is decoration, and decoration does not survive month one.

The business in a sentence

One sentence, in plain terms, that a stranger could repeat back to you. Who you serve, what you do for them, and how you are paid. “You place mid-level finance staff for growing manufacturers in the north of England, on a contingent fee” is a business. “Recruitment and talent solutions” is not.

If you cannot write the sentence, you do not yet know what you are selling, and no amount of planning underneath it will help. If the sentence has an “and” in it that joins two different businesses, cut one. You can add the second once the first pays for itself.

The sentence is also what you will say in every one of your first conversations, so it must be true and it must be something you can deliver alone, this quarter, with the tools a backer puts in front of you on day one and the monthly allowance covering your living costs while you do.

Three named target types

Not “small businesses”. Not “tech companies”. Three specific types of client, described tightly enough that you could build a list of fifty of each from public information in a week. A type is a sector, a size, a situation and a buyer. “Software firms that have just taken institutional money, with no in-house recruiter, where the buyer is the chief operating officer” is a type.

Three is the right number because one is a bet and five is a scatter. Rank them. The first type is the one where you have a real track record and people who will take your call. The second is adjacent to it. The third is the one you believe in but have not yet proved. Most of your first twelve weeks go on the first type. The third type is there so that the plan has somewhere to go when the first one surprises you, and it will.

Pricing and costs on one line each

Write down how you charge, with no range. A retainer invoiced monthly, a fee on placement, a fee per qualified meeting, a fixed monthly fee for a defined scope of finance work. Pick the one you have charged before and can defend across a table. Write the payment terms next to it, including how long a client has to claw a fee back if a placement leaves or a meeting does not convert, because that period decides when your profit share is paid.

Then costs. The business you build has two kinds. The cost of delivering the work: job boards, a recruiter seat on the professional network, data, any contractors you use, your own time. And the cost of running the company: accounting, software, insurance, the back office. Under the deal, the backer sets up and pays for the company, the brand, the tools and the back office. Write those down anyway, because profit is what is billed minus both kinds of cost, and your 30% is a share of profit, not of revenue. An operator should know their own cost base better than anyone.

The first twelve weeks in numbers

Not a forecast. A method. Start from the output you need, which is your first three clients, and work backwards through your own conversion rates. How many proposals does it take you to win one client. How many first meetings to get one proposal. How many conversations to get one first meeting. How many approaches to start one conversation. You know these rates from your previous desk, roughly. Use them, and be honest when you are guessing.

Then spread the activity across twelve weeks. The first four are heavy on approaches and light on everything else. Weeks five to eight should show first meetings and the first proposals. Weeks nine to twelve should show the first signatures, if the rates hold. Write the weekly activity numbers down, by type, as a table. That table is the plan. Everything above it is context.

When month one does not match the table, and it will not, you change the table, not the sentence. That is what surviving contact means.

The two targets you will be judged on

Not revenue. Revenue arrives late and lumpy and tells you little in the first quarter. The two numbers that tell a backer whether the desk is working are these: first meetings held per week with the right type of buyer, and the time between your first conversation with a client and their first invoice.

The first measures whether you are doing the work and talking to the right people. The second measures whether your sentence, your pricing and your proposals are landing. If meetings are happening and the time to first invoice is shortening, the business you build will produce profit and the shareholding at $40,000 of total profit becomes a date rather than a hope. If meetings are not happening, nothing downstream will fix it. If they are happening and nothing closes, the problem is the offer, and you and your partner will have a reset conversation about it. We say no to most things and quickly, and that includes plans that have no targets in them.

Agree both targets with your backer before you start. Then report them weekly, including the weeks they are bad.

The short version

• Write the business in one sentence a stranger could repeat.
• Name three target types tightly enough to list fifty of each.
• Put pricing, payment terms and the clawback period on one line.
• List delivery costs and running costs separately, even the ones the backer pays.
• Work backwards from three clients through your own conversion rates to weekly activity.
• Lay the activity out across twelve weeks as a table.
• Agree two targets: first meetings per week and time to first invoice.
• Change the table when reality disagrees with it, not the sentence.