Session 6: Final Project — Business Plan & Portfolio

A freelance business plan is not a document you write to impress anyone — it is the answer to five questions, written down so that next month's you does not have to work them out again. What do I sell? Three packages with named deliverables. To whom? One client type, narrowed enough that they recognise themselves. At what price? With a floor set by real cost and a target set by value. How do I find them? Two or three channels, with a weekly action for each. How do I measure it? The numbers that tell you whether it is working.

One page is a constraint that helps. It forces you to be specific, because vagueness does not fit, and it means you will actually read it again. A twenty-page plan written once and never opened is decoration; a one-page plan reviewed monthly is a working tool.

The thing that makes it credible is that every line is actionable. 'Grow my client base' is not a plan. 'Send five referral messages and make five direct approaches every week, and review the pipeline every Friday' is. If a line in your plan cannot be done on a specific day, it is an intention rather than a plan.

Three pieces, each written as problem, action, result. The problem: what the business was struggling with, in their terms. The action: what you did and why, briefly — enough to show judgement rather than to show off. The result: what changed, in the client's words where you can get them.

'A restaurant in Yaba had a menu customers could not read from the counter, and staff spent the evening answering questions instead of taking orders. We rebuilt it around three clear sections with photography and printed pricing. The owner reports fewer questions at the counter and noticeably more orders of the higher-margin dishes.' That is a case study. A screenshot of the menu is not, because it proves you can design a menu and nothing about whether it worked.

If you have no client work, do three pieces for real local businesses at little or no cost in exchange for permission to show them and a short quote. Real work with a named business and a stated result beats invented work every time, because it demonstrates that you can operate with a real person, a real deadline and a real constraint — which is what a client is actually hiring.

The pricing challenge exists because price is where freelancers lose money, and the loss almost always happens in a conversation rather than in a decision. The three attacks you will face: 'That is expensive.' 'Someone else will do it for less.' 'Can you do it for free, it is good exposure.' Each has an answer, and having the answer in advance is what stops you discounting in the moment.

The core of every answer is the same: do not defend the number, explain the scope. 'At ₦60,000 that is the full launch pack delivered in five days with two revision rounds. If the budget is ₦35,000, I can do the flyer and two social posts.' You have not conceded the price; you have adjusted the work. The client learns that your prices are firm and that scope is what moves.

For the free-work request, be honest and brief: 'I do paid work, but I would be glad to look at what you have and give you two suggestions.' That is generous without being exploited, and it often leads to paid work. What you must never do is work free for a business that can pay, because it teaches them and everyone they tell that your work has no price.

Present in five minutes, in the order that makes sense to a listener rather than the order you wrote it. Who you serve and what problem they have. What you sell them, the three packages and prices. How you will find them, the channels and the weekly actions. What the first three pieces of work are. What success looks like in ninety days, as a number.

The habit that separates a good presentation from a nervous one is specificity over completeness. You do not need to cover everything; you need to make the listener believe this is a real plan for a real business. Named client type, named packages, actual prices, actual weekly actions. Vague coverage of every topic persuades nobody.

Then take the critique properly. Write down every objection without defending anything in the moment. Most critique is useful even when it is delivered bluntly, and the instinct to explain yourself in the room costs you the information. Afterwards, sort the objections into three: things that are genuinely wrong and must change, things that are a matter of preference, and things that reflect the critic's own situation rather than yours. Change the first, consider the second, note the third.

The plan ends with a ninety-day sequence, because ninety days is long enough to produce results and short enough to stay honest. Weeks one to two: build the three portfolio pieces and set up the records and the business account. Weeks three to six: contact the twenty names, make five direct approaches a week, and win the first paid job. Weeks seven to ten: deliver it properly, ask for the testimonial and one referral, and offer a retainer.

Weeks eleven to thirteen: review the numbers, raise prices on new clients, and decide which channel produced the work worth keeping. That last step matters, because most freelancers keep doing everything they started instead of dropping what did not work — and the discipline of stopping is what frees time for what did.

The honest expectation: you will not be busy by week thirteen, and that is normal. What you will have is three case studies, a working records system, a defined offer at real prices, a pipeline with actual names in it, and the first evidence of what works for you specifically. That is a business beginning rather than a business established, and it is further than almost everyone who says they want to freelance actually gets.