Sample Business Plan Australia

Starting your business? While you absolutely should get help from a business coach, you can start the first steps yourself, with this sample business plan. Download is below.

Most business plan templates look the same. They cover the market, the money, the operations, and the risks. They’re thorough. They’re logical. And they almost universally leave out the one thing that will determine whether the business is actually worth building: the owner’s life.

As the lifestyle business coach in Melbourne, This post walks through a complete business plan structure — all the standard sections you’d expect — plus a dedicated lifestyle alignment section that most traditional frameworks ignore entirely. If you’re building a business that’s supposed to support the life you want, that section isn’t optional. It’s the foundation everything else should rest on.

The Complete Business Plan Structure

Section 1: Key Details

The administrative foundation of the plan. This section documents the business registration information and contact details that underpin everything else.

• Business name (registered and trading)
• Date registered and state of registration
• Business structure (sole trader, partnership, company, trust)
• ABN / ACN
• Licences, permits, and registrations
• Relevant memberships and qualifications
• Business location
• Owner contact details
• Website and social media addresses

Section 2: Executive Summary

Written last, read first. This is your overview of the entire plan — what the business does, why it exists, and whether it’s viable.

• The business idea: What does the business do, for whom, and why does it matter?
• Target market: Who are your ideal clients? What are their demographics, goals, and pain points?
• Unique selling point: What makes this business different from available alternatives?
• Viability: What evidence do you have that this business can work?
• Start-up budget: What does it cost to get off the ground?
• Vision statement: Where is this business heading in the long term?
• Mission statement: How will it get there?
• Business goals: Short-term and long-term targets, with actions, due dates, and accountability

★ Section 3: Lifestyle Alignment — The Section Most Plans Skip

This is the section that distinguishes a lifestyle business from an inadvertent prison.

Standard business plans treat the owner’s personal life as a footnote — something listed under “personal factors” and then largely set aside. The lifestyle alignment section reverses that priority. The business exists to support your life, not the other way around. This section makes that explicit, and turns it into a practical planning tool.

3a. Life Vision Statement Two to three sentences, written in the present tense, describing the life this business is designed to support. Not the business — the life. Write it as though it already exists. This is your declaration of intent. Everything else in the plan should be tested against it.

3b. Your Ideal Working Week A specific description of what a typical week looks like when the business is working as intended. Not a future goal — a design specification. Include: when the working day starts and ends, how many days per week you work, what kinds of tasks you spend your time on, and what the non-working hours look like. Specificity matters here. “Good work-life balance” is not a design spec. “Four working days, starting at nine, deep work in the mornings, finished by four, Fridays protected” is.

3c. Your Ten Life Dimensions Research into life satisfaction consistently identifies ten areas that determine how good a life actually feels:

1. romantic relationships
2. leisure, meaningful work
3. friendship
4. parenthood or close relationships with children
5. physical health
6. contribution to something beyond yourself
7. family
8. a sense of larger purpose
9. and personal growth.

For each dimension, identify: how it’s currently going, how you want it to look in two to three years, and the specific, recurring commitment that will protect it in your week. If it isn’t scheduled, it isn’t protected.

3d. Your Constraints and Non-Negotiables What are you not willing to do? What are the lines that no commercial opportunity is permitted to cross — on working hours, client types, service formats, geographic requirements, or personal commitments? These are your decision filters. When a new opportunity arrives, you test it against this list before evaluating it on its own merits.

3e. Income Sufficiency Not a revenue aspiration — a real, specific, monthly after-tax figure that funds the life described in your vision statement. Separate your expenses into three categories: essential (housing, food, health, transport), meaningful (experiences and spending that genuinely improves your quality of life), and compensatory (spending that offsets a poor work-life balance). Add the first two. That’s your real number.

3f. Product-Life Fit Assessment For each product or service you offer, answer four questions: Does it require your physical presence? Can it scale without your direct time? Does it surround you with people you enjoy working with? Does it energise you? Products or services that fail multiple tests belong on your anti-portfolio — the list of work you’ll phase out in favour of better-aligned opportunities.

3g. Your Anti-Portfolio A list of the clients, services, or working patterns you’re currently carrying that don’t belong in the business you’re designing. Each item needs a removal plan with a realistic timeline. The space created by letting go of misaligned work is room for better-fit opportunities — not a gap to be filled immediately with whatever’s available.

3h. Review Schedule One annual review date (when you reassess the full alignment plan) and four quarterly check-ins (fifteen minutes each, three questions: is the business pointing in the right direction? Are the ten dimensions protected? Is anything on the anti-portfolio still there that shouldn’t be?). Put the dates in the calendar before moving on.

Section 4: The Market

Evidence that the business opportunity is real, and that you understand the landscape you’re entering.

• Research methodology: How you conducted your market research (interviews, data sources, competitor analysis)
• Primary research: What you observed directly — conversations with potential clients, networking, testing assumptions
• Secondary research: Data and published sources that support your market understanding
• Market analysis and industry trends: What you found — size of the market, growth trends, structural shifts
• Expected demand: Realistic assessment of how many potential clients exist, and what share is accessible to you
• The problem: What specific problem does your business solve? What are the real pain points of your ideal client?
• Your solution: How does your business address those pain points, and why is your approach better than available alternatives?
• Target market (customer avatar): A detailed profile of your ideal client — their goals, values, sources of information, demographics, challenges, and objections
• The competition: Who else is solving this problem? What are their strengths and weaknesses? What will you do differently?
• SWOT analysis: Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats — across yourself, your products, and your business

Section 5: Legislation and Compliance

The legal and regulatory framework your business operates within.

• Specific laws and regulations that apply to your industry and business structure
• Licences, permits, and registrations required
• Records you’re legally required to keep, and how you’ll keep them
• Bank accounts and financial record-keeping
• Policies and procedures required (WHS, privacy, data protection, refunds, terms and conditions, workplace policies)

Section 6: Marketing Strategy

How you’ll find, attract, and retain the right clients.

• Marketing goals: Specific, measurable targets for lead generation, conversion, and client retention
• Pricing strategy: How you set your prices, and why — including whether you price by time or by outcome (and if you’re pricing by time, why)
• Products and services mix: What you offer, how it’s positioned, and how it differs from competitors
• Sales and distribution channels: Where and how clients access your products or services, ranked by priority
• Promotion and advertising: Specific activities, channels, estimated costs, and target dates
• Marketing review schedule: How and when you’ll measure what’s working, and what success looks like for each activity
• Marketing budget: What you’re spending, on what, and the expected return
• Customer relationship management: How you’ll maintain relationships with clients after the first sale

Section 7: Operations

How the business actually runs day to day.

• Core business processes: The key workflows that deliver your product or service — from lead to sale, and from sale to delivery
• Production and suppliers: How you produce what you sell, and where your inputs come from
• Labour and specialist services: Who does what, at what rate, and what happens when capacity is exceeded
• Internal stakeholders: Roles, hours, rates, skills required, and who currently fills each role
• External stakeholders: Advisers, networks, government bodies, and suppliers who support the business
• Payment methods: How clients pay, and what systems manage the transaction
• Assets: Premises, stock and inventory, equipment
• Intellectual property: What you’ve created that has commercial value and needs protection
• Technology stack: The software and systems the business runs on
• Environmental impact: How the business affects the environment, and what you’re doing about it

Section 8: The Finances

The numbers that determine whether the business is viable.

MAKE SURE YOU USE A FINANCIAL PROFESSIONAL TO CHECK YOUR FINANCES.

I recommend an accountant always checks this step.

• Start-up costs: Everything required to launch, with a total
• Current finances: What you’re starting with
• Funding required: Any gap between start-up costs and available funds, and how you’ll bridge it
• Sources and costs of funding: Loans, personal capital, grants — with terms and repayment obligations
• Break-even point: The minimum revenue needed to cover costs, expressed as a monthly figure and a number of units sold
• Managing financial performance: How you’ll track performance and respond to variance
• Profit and loss forecast: Projected revenue, COGS, gross profit, operating expenses, and net profit — by quarter, for at least two years

Section 9: Risk Management and Contingency Planning

What could go wrong, and what you’ll do about it.

• Risk assessment: A list of risks with likelihood ratings and specific mitigation strategies for each
• Insurance: Types of cover held or required, provider, coverage amount, and status
• Information backup strategy: What data needs backing up, how often, who’s responsible, and what the procedure is
• Contingency plan: Your main emergency contacts, what happens to the business in specific scenarios (illness, injury, equipment failure, extended absence), and how key functions are covered
• Cyber incident response plan: Step-by-step procedure for different types of cyber events, including prevention measures and staff education

Section 10: Appendix

Supporting documents and reference material.

• Insurance certificates (Use a professional insurance specialist broker to make sure you’re legal)
• Hours of work and staffing arrangements
• Legal Documents (Use a lawyer)
• Certifications and qualifications
• Procedure diagrams referenced in the operations section
• Financial spreadsheets
• Any other supporting evidence referenced in the plan

How to Use This Structure

A business plan written in this order — with lifestyle alignment as its third section, sitting between the executive summary and the market analysis — produces a fundamentally different document from a standard plan. Every commercial decision that follows (pricing, client selection, product design, channel choice) can be tested against a clear picture of what the business is actually supposed to deliver.

The lifestyle section is not a soft addition. It’s the brief the rest of the plan is written to satisfy. Without it, a business plan tells you whether a business is viable. With it, it tells you whether the business is worth building.