In today’s review, I am looking at the Business Plan Workspace by Notionologia.
A business plan serves as a strategic tool for entrepreneurs. It helps them to analyze their business idea and look at its strengths and weaknesses objectively. Furthermore, it is a communication tool used to communicate the validity of a business idea to potential stakeholders or investors.
In short, business plans serve the following 4 purposes:
- Raising money from investors
- Making better decisions for your business
- Identifying potential threats or weaknesses
- Communicating your business idea to potential stakeholders
Critique of business plans
A lot of people criticize the idea of creating a business plan. It is often asserted that this is something taught at business school, but not necessary for real life.
Real life is more complicated than the entrepreneur’s plan, or as famously stated by Mike Tyson:
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.â€
There is something true about this opinion. Even billionaire Jeff Bezos warns against relying on plans too heavily:
“Any business plan won’t survive its first encounter with reality. The reality will always be different. It will never be the plan.â€
The problem with plans is that we confuse the map with the territory. Reality is always more complex and dynamic than our plans. However, this isn’t necessarily an argument against planning:
“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.†Dwight D. Eisenhower
If you create a business plan for yourself, don’t count on it to show you a fixed road to success. See it more as a tool that forces you to think about your ideas. In the best-case scenario, you will discover a flaw in your business endeavor that you would have otherwise missed.
This is also the reason why investors love business plans. Not so much because they believe in the numbers presented, but more because it is a sign that an entrepreneur has thought about his or her business idea in detail.
How often do we fall in love with our ideas, only to later realize that we believed in a castle built on sand? Taking the time to reflect and write down a business plan is strong medicine against such illusions.
This is the reason, why being able to show an investor an in-depth business plan can make the difference between acquiring the money to work on your dreams or going broke.
Why Create a Business Plan in Notion?
Notion brings the art of digital writing into the 21st century.
Traditionally, business plans are written with programs like MS Word. However, Notion enables you to create a much more interactive business plan. It allows you to collaborate with team members and to directly share your business plan pages with stakeholders.
Moreover:
• “Automations between Notion & other apps such as Zapier or Automate can save a lot of time on the Market Research Stage
• The presentation can be made in Notion, saving time by accessing information fast and avoiding the use of another software such as PowerPoint.
• Team Members and stakeholders can interact and review different stages of the planâ€
First Impression of the Business Plan Template
The template is pretty easy to use, although there is some learning curve at the beginning!
To get started, duplicate the [Name] Business Plan page
If you click on the page you will enter the business plan dashboard. This is the area where all the magic happens. In total there exist 10 different stages, ranging from “brainstorming†to “final presentationâ€.
All 10 Business Plan Stages:
- Brainstorming
- Market Analysis
- Operation Plan
- Legal Plan
- Control Plan
- Business Description
- Marketing Plan
- Human Resources Strategy
- Financial Plan
- Presentation
A Look Inside the Business Plan Notion Template:
Let’s start with brainstorming. When we open this dashboard, we are greeted by a Milestone tracker. This tracker appears in every dashboard and contains milestones relevant to each stage. When working on your business plan simply change the status to complete once you have finished the respective milestone.
When starting in the brainstorming phase, you are first guided through a Necessities section. Here you are asked to find a need to solve, a solution to offer, or a passion to satisfy in the market. This is important because it is probably impossible to generate sustainable sales if you can’t communicate the value you are producing.
In the next space, the creative process continues. The database prompts you to do a so-called starburst brainstorming session. This technique is called like that because you start with an idea at the center and then create a six-point star around it. Each point represents a question: who, what, when, where, why, and how.
This encourages you to clarify your idea even more. It is suggested to do this session at least once. Moreover, the template instruction recommends using graphic software like Miro, Figma, or Canva to create visual results. Those results can later be embedded in the Notion page.
After completing the second stage, the template urges you to filter your results. From all the ideas created, decide on one that is feasible and for which you have the necessary resources
Finally, you are asked to write down your final business idea in a paragraph. After finishing the brainstorming stage, you are now ready to move your idea through the next 9 stages till you have developed the final business plan.
How easy is it to navigate this Notion template?
As told before: The learning curve for this template is a bit steep, but after you have gotten accustomed to the way this template works, it becomes easy to move through the different stages. The highlight of this template is definitely the great guiding structure that helps you to complete a business plan without skipping any important step.
The template does a great job of instructing and encouraging users to complete the plan. Therefore it works excellently for entrepreneurs who have never created a business plan before.
In the end, this template is an interactive guide and includes the best features of Notion. It takes full advantage of Notion’s writing capabilities and will assist you in writing a flawless business plan.
Ratings
Usability 4/5
Easy to use after a short adjustment period
Creativity 5/5
Showcasing the power of Notion, this template combines a practical guide to creating a business plan with templates that make it easy to write and later share the plan with investors and shareholders.
Aesthetics 5/5
Solid aesthetics. 5 points for using customized icons and images throughout the template.
Overall Rating for the Template 4.67/5
Buy this Template on Gumroad.
Price:Â $ 30
Versions: English, Spanish
Lifetime Access