Write a business plan (the useful part)
The four analyses every plan is built on — before you open a document.
3–5 hours across the four steps Anyone writing a plan for a bank, investor, board, or themselves
A business plan document is mostly narrative wrapped around four analyses: what is happening in the world, how brutal the industry is, where you stand, and how the business actually works. Do the analyses first and the writing becomes transcription; skip them and the plan is fiction with formatting.
This sequence runs outside-in: macro environment, then industry, then your position, then your model. Each step's output slots directly into a standard plan section.
- 1
Scan the macro environment with PESTLE
Start with the forces you cannot control — political, economic, social, technological, legal, environmental. Attach a 'so what' to every factor; a factor with no implication for your business is a headline, not analysis.
Carry forward
The three to five external factors with real consequences for you. These feed the opportunities and threats halves of step three, and the 'market context' section of the plan.
- 2
Judge the industry with Five Forces
Before claiming you will win, establish whether the game is worth playing. Rivalry, entrants, substitutes, buyer power, supplier power — rate each with evidence. If four of five forces are hostile, the plan needs a moat story, not optimism.
Carry forward
Which force is strongest, and what your plan does about it. Investors and loan officers ask exactly this question in their own words.
- 3
Locate yourself with a SWOT
With the external picture done, the SWOT stops being generic: opportunities and threats come straight from steps one and two, so all your effort goes into an honest read of strengths and weaknesses.
Carry forward
The strength-opportunity pairings (your strategy section) and the weakness-threat pairings (your risk section, each with a mitigation).
- 4
Assemble the model on a Business Model Canvas
Finally, describe how the business actually works: who pays, for what, through which channels, at what cost. The canvas exposes contradictions a thirty-page document hides — a premium proposition on a cost-driven structure, a segment no channel reaches.
Carry forward
The finished canvas is your executive summary in picture form. Export the PDF and put it on page two of the plan.
What you walk away with
Four exportable analyses that map one-to-one onto the sections of a standard business plan: market context, industry, strategy and risk, and business model.
Start with step one
The PESTLE Analysis editor opens with guided prompts on every block — 30-45 minutes to a first draft.
Begin: PESTLE Analysis