how to develop a 5 year business plan

How to Write a Five-Year Business Plan

Noah Parsons

15 min. read

Updated October 27, 2023

Learn why the traditional way of writing a five-year business plan is often a waste of time and how to use a one-page plan instead for smarter, easier strategic planning to establish your long-term vision. 

In business, it can sometimes seem hard enough to predict what’s going to happen next month, let alone three or even five years from now. But, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t plan for the long term. After all, your vision for the future is what gets you out of bed in the morning and motivates your team. It’s those aspirations that drive you to keep innovating and figuring out how to grow.

• What is a long-term plan?

A long-term or long-range business plan looks beyond the traditional 3-year planning window, focusing on what a business might look like 5 or even 10 years from now. A traditional 5-year business plan includes financial projections, business strategy, and roadmaps that stretch far into the future.

I’ll be honest with you, though—for most businesses, long-range business plans that stretch 5 and 10 years into the future are a waste of time. Anyone who’s seriously asking you for one doesn’t know what they’re doing and is wasting your time. Sorry if that offends some people, but it’s true.

However, there is still real value in looking at the long term. Just don’t invest the time in creating a lengthy version of your business plan with overly detailed metrics and milestones for the next five-plus years. No one knows the future and, more than likely, anything you write down now could be obsolete in the next year, next month, or even next week. 

That’s where long-term strategic planning comes in. A long-term business plan like this is different from a traditional business plan in that it’s lighter on the details and more focused on your strategic direction. It has less focus on financial forecasting and a greater focus on the big picture. 

Think of your long-term strategic plan as your aspirational vision for your business. It defines the ideal direction you’re aiming for but it’s not influencing your day-to-day or, potentially, even your monthly decision making. 

• Are long-term business plans a waste of time?

No one knows the future. We’re all just taking the information that we have available today and making our best guesses about the future. Sometimes trends in a market are pretty clear and your guesses will be well-founded. Other times, you’re trying to look around a corner and hoping that your intuition about what comes next is correct.

Now, I’m not saying that thinking about the future is a waste of time. Entrepreneurs are always thinking about the future. They have to have some degree of faith and certainty about what customers are going to want in the future. Successful entrepreneurs do actually predict the future — they know what customers are going to want and when they’re going to want it.

Entrepreneurship is unpredictable 

Successful entrepreneurs are also often wrong. They make mistakes just like the rest of us. The difference between successful entrepreneurs and everyone else is that they don’t let mistakes slow them down. They learn from mistakes, adjust and try again. And again. And again. It’s not about being right all the time; it’s about having the perseverance to keep trying until you get it right. For example, James Dyson, inventor of the iconic vacuum cleaner, tried out 5,126 prototypes of his invention before he found a design that worked.

So, if thinking about the future isn’t a waste of time, why are 5-year business plans a waste of time? They’re a waste of time because they typically follow the same format as a traditional business plan, where you are asked to project sales, expenses, and cash flow 5 and 10 years into the future. 

Let’s be real. Sales and expense projections that far into the future are just wild guesses, especially for startups and new businesses. They’re guaranteed to be wrong and can’t be used for anything. You can’t (and shouldn’t) make decisions based on these guesses. They’re just fantasy. You hope you achieve massive year-over-year growth in sales, but there’s no guarantee that’s going to happen. And, you shouldn’t make significant spending decisions today based on the hope of massive sales 10 years from now.

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• Why write a long-term business plan?

So, what is the purpose of outlining a long-term plan? Here are a few key reasons why it’s still valuable to consider the future of your business without getting bogged down by the details.

Showcase your vision for investors

First, and especially important if you are raising money from investors, is your vision. Investors will want to know not only where you plan on being in a year, but where the business will be in five years. Do you anticipate launching new products or services? Will you expand internationally? Or will you find new markets to grow into? 

Set long-term goals for your business

Second, you’ll want to establish goals for yourself and your team. What kinds of high-level sales targets do you hope to achieve? How big is your company going to get overtime? These goals can be used to motivate your team and even help in the hiring process as you get up and running.

That said, you don’t want to overinvest in fleshing out all the details of a long-range plan. You don’t need to figure out exactly how your expansion will work years from now or exactly how much you’ll spend on office supplies five years from now. That’s really just a waste of time.

Instead, for long-range planning, think in broad terms. A good planning process means that you’re constantly revising and refining your business plan. You’ll add more specifics as you go, creating a detailed plan for the next 6-12 months and a broader, vague plan for the long term.

You have a long development time

Businesses with extremely long research and development timelines do make spending decisions now based on the hope of results years from now. For example, the pharmaceutical industry and medical device industry have to make these bets all the time. The R&D required to take a concept from idea to proven product with regulatory approval can take years for these industries, so long-range planning in these cases is a must. A handful of other industries also have similar development timelines, but these are the exceptions, not the rule.

Your business is well-established and predictable 

Long-term, detailed planning can make more sense for businesses that are extremely well established and have long histories of consistent sales and expenses with predictable growth. But, even for those businesses, predictability means quite the opposite of stability. The chances that you’ll be disrupted in the marketplace by a new company, or the changing needs and desires of your customers, is extremely high. So, most likely, those long-range predictions of sales and profits are pretty useless.

• What a 5-year plan should look like

With the exception of R&D-heavy businesses, most 5-year business plans should be more like vision statements than traditional business plans. They should explain your vision for the future, but skip the details of detailed sales projections and expense budgets. 

Your vision for your business should explain the types of products and services that you hope to offer in the future and the types of customers that you hope to serve. Your plan should outline who you plan to serve now and how you plan to expand if you are successful.

This kind of future vision creates a strategic roadmap. It’s not a fully detailed plan with sales forecasts and expense budgets, but a plan for getting started and then growing over time to reach your final destination.

For example, here’s a short-form version of what a long-term plan for Nike might have looked like if one had been written in the 1960s:

Nike will start by developing high-end track shoes for elite athletes. We’ll start with a focus on the North West of the US, but expand nationally as we develop brand recognition among track and field athletes. We will use sponsored athletes to spread the word about the quality and performance of our shoes. Once we have success in the track & field market segment, we believe that we will be able to successfully expand both beyond the US market and also branch out into other sports, with an initial focus on basketball.

Leadership and brand awareness in a sport such as basketball will enable us to cross over from the athlete market into the consumer market. This will lead to significant business growth in the consumer segment and allow for expansion into additional sports, fashion, and casual markets in addition to building a strong apparel brand.

Interestingly enough, Nike (to my knowledge) never wrote out a long-range business plan. They developed their plans as they grew, building the proverbial airplane as it took off.

But, if you have this kind of vision for your business, it’s useful to articulate it. Your employees will want to know what your vision is and your investors will want to know as well. They want to know that you, as an entrepreneur, are looking beyond tomorrow and into the future months and years ahead.

• How to write a five-year business plan

Writing out your long-term vision for your business is a useful exercise. It can bring a sense of stability and solidify key performance indicators and broad milestones that drive your business. 

Developing a long-range business plan is really just an extension of your regular business planning process. A typical business plan covers the next one to three years, documenting your target market, marketing strategy, and product or service offerings for that time period. 

A five-year plan expands off of that initial strategy and discusses what your business might do in the years to come. However, as I’ve mentioned before, creating a fully detailed five-year business plan will be a waste of time. 

Here’s a quick guide to writing a business plan that looks further into the future without wasting your time:

1. Develop your one-page plan

As with all business planning, we recommend that you start with a one-page business plan. It provides a snapshot of what you’re hoping to achieve in the immediate term by outlining your core business strategy, target market, and business model.

A one-page plan is the foundation of all other planning because it’s the document that you’ll keep the most current. It’s also the easiest to update and share with business partners. You will typically highlight up to three years of revenue and profit goals as well as milestones that you hope to achieve in the near term.

Check out our guide to building your one-page plan and download a free template to get started.

2. Determine if you need a traditional business plan

Unlike a one-page business plan, a traditional business plan is more detailed and is typically written in long-form prose. A traditional business plan is usually 10-20 pages long and contains details about your product or service, summaries of the market research that you’ve conducted, and details about your competition. Read our complete guide to writing a business plan .

Companies that write traditional business plans typically have a “business plan event” where a complete business plan is required. Business plan events are usually part of the fundraising process. During fundraising, lenders and investors may ask to see a detailed plan and it’s important to be ready if that request comes up. 

But there are other good reasons to write a detailed business plan. A detailed plan forces you to think through the details of your business and how, exactly, you’re going to build your business. Detailed plans encourage you to think through your business strategy, your target market, and your competition carefully. A good business plan ensures that your strategy is complete and fleshed out, not just a collection of vague ideas.

A traditional business plan is also a good foundation for a long-term business plan and I recommend that you expand your lean business plan into a complete business plan if you intend to create plans for more than three years into the future.

3. Develop long-term goals and growth targets

As you work on your business plan, you’ll need to think about where you want to be in 5+ years. A good exercise is to envision what your business will look like. How many employees will you have? How many locations will you serve? Will you introduce new products and services? 

When you’ve envisioned where you want your business to be, it’s time to turn that vision into a set of goals that you’ll document in your business plan. Each section of your business plan will be expanded to highlight where you want to be in the future. For example, in your target market section, you will start by describing your initial target market. Then you’ll proceed to describe the markets that you hope to reach in 3-5 years.

To accompany your long-term goals, you’ll also need to establish revenue targets that you think you’ll need to meet to achieve your goals. It’s important to also think about the expenses you’re going to incur in order to grow your business. 

For long-range planning, I recommend thinking about your expenses in broad buckets such as “marketing” and “product development” without getting bogged down in too much detail. Think about what percentage of your sales you’ll spend on each of these broad buckets. For example, marketing spending might be 20% of sales. 

4. Develop a 3-5 year strategic plan

Your goals and growth targets are “what” you want to achieve. Your strategy is “how” you’re going to achieve it.

Use your business plan to document your strategy for growth. You might be expanding your product offering, expanding your market, or some combination of the two. You’ll need to think about exactly how this process will happen over the next 3-5 years. 

A good way to document your strategy is to use milestones. These are interim goals that you’ll set to mark your progress along the way to your larger goal. For example, you may have a goal to expand your business nationally from your initial regional presence. You probably won’t expand across the country all at once, though. Most likely, you’ll expand into certain regions one at a time and grow to have a national presence over time. Your strategy will be the order of the regions that you plan on expanding into and why you pick certain regions over others.

Your 3-5 year strategy may also include what’s called an “exit strategy”. This part of a business plan is often required if you’re raising money from investors. They’ll want to know how they’ll eventually get their money back. An “exit” can be the sale of your business or potentially going public. A typical exit strategy will identify potential acquirers for your business and will show that you’ve thought about how your business might be an attractive purchase.

5. Tie your long-term plan to your one-page plan

As your business grows, you can use your long-term business plan as your north star. Your guide for where you want to end up. Use those goals to steer your business in the right direction, making small course corrections as you need to. 

You’ll reflect those smaller course corrections in your one-page plan. Because it is a simple document and looks at the shorter term, it’s easier to update. The best way to do this is to set aside a small amount of time to review your plan once a month. You’ll review your financial forecast, your milestones, and your overall strategy. If things need to change, you can make those adjustments. Nothing ever goes exactly to plan, so it’s OK to make corrections as you go.

You may find that your long-term plan may also need corrections as you grow your business. You may learn things about your market that change your initial assumptions and impacts your long-range plan. This is perfectly normal. Once a quarter or so, zoom out and review your long-range plan. If you need to make corrections to your strategy and goals, that’s fine. Just keep your plan alive so that it gives you the guidance that you need over time. 

• Vision setting is the purpose of long-term planning

Part of what makes entrepreneurs special is that they have a vision. They have dreams for where they want their business to go. A 5-year business plan should be about documenting that vision for the future and how your business will capitalize on that vision.

So, if someone asks you for your 5-year business plan. Don’t scramble to put together a sales forecast and budget for 5 years from now. Your best guess today will be obsolete tomorrow. Instead, focus on your vision and communicate that. 

Explain where you think your business is going and what you think the market is going to be like 5 years from now. Explain what you think customers are going to want and where trends are headed and how you’re going to be there to sell the solution to the problems that exist in 5 and 10 years. Just skip the invented forecasts and fantasy budgets.

Noah is the COO at Palo Alto Software, makers of the online business plan app LivePlan. He started his career at Yahoo! and then helped start the user review site Epinions.com. From there he started a software distribution business in the UK before coming to Palo Alto Software to run the marketing and product teams.

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How to Write a 5-Year Business Plan: A Guide to Creating a Good Business Future

Learning how to write an effective five-year business plan helps you manage, and optimize your business operations for the better.

Jenna Bunnell

Jenna Bunnell is the Director for Field and Strategic Events at Dialpad.

To run and grow a successful business, planning is crucial. 

A typical business plan covers the next one to three years and details your target audience, marketing strategy, and products or services for that time period. A five-year business plan expands on this premise, and predicts what your business might do in the next five years. 

Learning how to write an effective five-year business plan helps you manage, and optimize your business operations for the better. Without a firm business plan, you risk straying from your intended course. 

Establishing a long-term plan determines your business’s priorities and aspirations, including several important milestones. A long-term business ensures you are improving business time management skills. 

To get cracking with developing your ideal five-year business plan, follow this simple guide to success.  ​​​​​​​

Why Create a 5-Year Business Plan?

Suppose you implement a robust five-year business plan at some point in your business’s lifetime. In that case, it will provide valuable insight into how your business is likely to fare over the coming years. 

In addition to long-term business insights, your business plan helps with:

An important part of your business plan is thorough market research, and measuring what your competitors are doing. Conducting this analysis allows you to make strategic decisions about moving your business forward. 

Strategic Planning

The creation of your five-year business plan solidifies the ideas you have for your business, and what you need in place to see those ideas come to fruition. 

Partnerships

If you can envision future collaboration opportunities, your five-year business plan is a great resource for other companies to learn about your business, and decide if they want to go into partnership with you. 

A strategic five-year business plan helps you encourage data-driven business growth in the long-term, and assists with decisions about the company’s future. Businesses that create long-term business plans are good at strategic thinking and prepared for potential obstacles their companies may face. 

What Should a 5-Year Business Plan Include?

A traditional five-year business plan should include business strategies, financial projections, competitive analysis, SWOT analysis, and future roadmaps. In essence, your five-year business plan should detail your business's direction, what you think your industry will look like in five years, trend predictions, and how your business will solve your target audience’s problems.   

Your five-year business plan will probably include the following aspects; however, it may vary slightly from this outline:

• Executive Summary. A brief description of your business, and its goals. 
• Business Description. Where does your business operate, and what does it do?
• Management Team. The people who run your business.
• Products and Services. A description of your business’s offerings.  
• SWOT Analysis. Analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats concerning your business. 
• Target Audience. Who buys from your business, and are there potential new audiences you want to reach?
• Competitive Analysis. Who are your competitors, and how does your business compare to them?
• Market Analysis. How does your business meet the needs of its customers?
• Marketing and Sales Plan. Plans for brand awareness, and increasing sales. 
• Financials. Profit and loss statements, and future financial projections. 
• Conclusion. An overall summary of your five-year business plan. 

How to Write a 5-Year Business Plan

Let’s look at the outline above in detail, to uncover what to include in each section. 

Executive Summary 

Write your executive summary with your business’s overview, and mission statement. Concise mission statements that reflect your business’s goals and objectives are ideal, such as these from famous brands:

“To connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive, and successful.” LinkedIn “To help people worldwide plan and have the perfect trip.” Trip Advisor 

Consider writing your business’s executive summary after completing the other sections, as this element of your plan should be a complete rundown of your business. 

Business Description

This section contains all the essential information about your business, including your goals, target customers, business structure, and future restructuring plans to align with objectives. Consider why your business exists, your hopes for your business’s future, and its values to fill out this section. 

Management Team

Include a brief description of your management team’s job responsibilities, skills, and how they fit into your business. Your team can act as your business’s USP, especially if they bring unique talents to the table. 

Products and Services

A detailed description of your business’s products and services, including benefits, features, and supplier information if relevant. List potential new services or products in the early planning stages, how much revenue you plan to make from them, and how they will serve your target audience. 

SWOT Analysis

Focus on your business’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and potential threats. For example, strengths may include your business’s exemplary customer service. A weakness might be that you need to optimize resource scheduling . Opportunities are areas your business can explore to scale up, and threats can include opposition problems or changes in your industry. 

Target Audience

Describe your current target audience, and any potential new audiences your business plans to expand to reach. Segment your customers into demographics, behavior patterns, values, and level of education if appropriate to your business. Doing this helps readers of your five-year business plan further understand how your business plans to grow.  

Competitive Analysis

Your business plan should include information about who your competitors are, and, where your business sits compared to them. For example, SaaS businesses would conduct cloud call center software comparison research to understand the competitive landscape. Finish off with details about your competitors’ strengths, and weaknesses in this section. Competitive analysis helps you understand areas your business can win over your competitors. If their social media platforms show that their overall customer service is underperforming, you can make strides to elevate your customer service efforts, and overtake them in this area. 

Market Analysis

Research your market and write your findings, incorporating statistics, and relevant data. This area of your business plan should focus on where your business is positioned currently in the market, and your predictions for future market changes regarding your business’s strategies. Think about how big the current market is for your products or services, and this should create ideas for future product developments. 

Marketing and Sales Plan 

You need an overall plan for marketing your business’s offerings to your target audience. Include information about digital marketing plans, and opportunities to increase your brand’s reach. If you plan to explore the benefits of local phone numbers to level up your sales team’s capabilities, add this information as part of your marketing plan. 

Include details about your sales strategy, involving future staff required to meet your business’s goals. Information about sales targets is helpful in this section of your business plan.  

Financials 

Prepare a financial report demonstrating your business’s financial projections over the next five years. Your report must include anticipated revenue based on market, and competitor research. 

Conclusion 

Illustrate the key points within your five-year business plan in a neat summary. This section should reassure potential investors that your business is viable, and has solid plans for growth. 

Develop Long-term Growth Targets

While creating your five-year business plan, always have in mind where you envision your business in five years.

When writing your long-term business plan, the following questions are helpful:

• How many customers do you predict to gain in the next five years?
• What do you need to put in place to achieve that customer number?
• Do you need to consider shopify alternatives ?
• How much does your business need to earn in year three to be on track?
• Do you need to hire new staff members? If so, how many?
• Will you change your business location?
• Will you need to open up different locations for your business operations?
• Will you introduce new products or services?

Consider setting milestones for the course of your five-year business plan, as this approach is often easier to manage. 

Say your business plans to dabble in the affiliate marketing world. Investigate drop shipping vs affiliate marketing approaches to ascertain which marketing method is most beneficial for your business. Then set a milestone to join a set number of affiliate marketing programs by a specific date, review your results, and move upwards from there.  

Making a Good Business Future 

Your five-year business plan will require amendments over time. And that’s perfectly normal. As your business grows and changes, you’ll learn new things about your business’s industry, and need to alter your roadmap accordingly. 

An effective five-year business plan serves to convince investors that your business is worth investing in. It also ensures that your business moves in the right, and planned direction. 

By creating a five-year business plan now, your business stands the best chance of success for the next five years, and the future. 

About the author

Jenna Bunnell is the Director for Field and Strategic Events at Dialpad, an AI-incorporated cloud-hosted unified communications system that provides valuable call details for business owners and sales representatives. She is driven and passionate about communicating a brand’s design sensibility and visualizing how content can be presented in creative and comprehensive ways. Here is her  LinkedIn .

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[Updated 2023] How to Write a Five Year Business Plan [Best Templates Included]

Smriti Srivastava

Achieving a set of goals is challenging.

Maintaining the motivation and productivity to achieve business goals is even harder.

In the words of Yogi Berra, a big-league baseball player-turned-manager, “Without a plan, even the most brilliant business can get lost. You need to have goals, create milestones, and have a strategy in place to set yourself up for success.”

This is why everyone in the industry — from an interviewer looking to hire top talent to an entrepreneur who accomplishes goals systematically — splits their business plan into five years. A five-year business plan not only extends a generous period to attain the set targets but at the same time keeps everyone on their toes, removing procrastination.

But writing a five-year business plan can get tedious, messy, and, sometimes, take forever to hit the right spot.

Therefore, this blog will cover the essential steps to help you write a tremendous five-year business plan.

Chronology of writing a spectacular five-year business plan

It is quite simple. You cannot achieve something great when you don’t know your priorities, objectives, ways, and timeframe to achieve those targets. It is essential to build a five-year plan for your business as well as the outcomes and expectations related to it.

But where do you start?

Here are the five sections you must include in your plan:

#1 A clear company introduction

A brief yet effective overview of your business, its market, team structure, roles and responsibilities, company offerings, and value proposition builds the foundation for your future endeavors. You use a company overview to set the right tone at the beginning of your business plan, as it serves as the base and a direction for your audience.

Related read: How to Create an Attention-Grabbing Company Introduction Slide in 10 Minutes

#2 vision and mission statement.

You have to ensure your employees, stakeholders, investors, and potential clients understand what your company is all about and what you stand for. Your vision and mission statement helps you with it. It enlightens the audience about your future plans - where you see your company in five years and the results you will work to achieve.

Related read: Top 10 Mission and Vision Statement Templates to Guide Your Organizational Culture

#3 target market and branding.

State who your company is looking to serve and why. Provide clarity on your target market based on psychographics and demographics. And do not forget to mention the size of your target market. You have to create a framework for making your brand visible exponentially and simultaneously create a lead generation and conversion strategy.

Related read: Top 30 PowerPoint Templates to Analyze Dominant Market Drivers

#4 product overview.

Set clear priorities based on the distinction between your primary and secondary products. You need to connect your branding around the product or service core to your company. This categorization will help you establish the revenue your products generate and the impacts they create. Further, it will help modify your plans accordingly.

Related read: Top 10 One-Page Product Overview PowerPoint Templates to Drive Sales

#5 swot analysis.

Measuring your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in the industry can help you successfully dominate the market. Therefore, your five-year business plan must include regular and timely analysis of all your business operations. There is no better way to meet targets than keeping a check on one’s activities. It will help you focus on the proprietary system of your company.

Related read: Top 50 SWOT Analysis PowerPoint Templates Used by Professionals Worldwide

Templates to nail your business plan.

Often we have countless ideas to plan our way to a successful business. But as the day-to-day grind starts, it is easy to get distracted from the end goal and stray from the path leading to our intent. We look for a north star to point us directly to our mission. So we decided to make your life a bit easier by providing our readymade and editable five-year business plan templates. You can access them below. Dive in!

Template 1: Five Year Business Plan Roadmap Template

Help your team stay on track with your future business ambitions by taking the assistance of our invigorating PowerPoint template. This content-ready template helps you visualize your work plan and present your vision impactfully. You just need to click the download link to start customizing it.

Download this template

Template 2: Key Poniters for Five Year Business Plan

Use this business plan template that includes vital pointers such as setting clear goals and objectives, conducting market research and competitor analysis, developing a comprehensive marketing strategy, creating financial projections, and establishing a system for measuring progress and adjusting your plan accordingly. By following a structured template and considering these essential elements, you can create a plan that sets your organization up for long-term success.

Template 3: Five Year Roadmap Timeline for Business Plan

Employ this professionally curated template to improve the success rate of your business. This template helps you track the progress of all your operational activities without any hassle. Also, our color-coded template makes it easy to comprehend and follow. So download this adaptable template to start adding your data effortlessly.

Template 4: Five-Year Business Plan Roadmap with Operations and Functions

You can utilize this template to articulate the workflow of your organization smoothly. This template allows you to write an attractive executive summary of your business operations and functions. Download the template and start assembling your key milestones immediately. Click the link below!

Template 5: Five Year Milestones Template

Outline the timeline for achieving future goals with the help of this template. Our experts have designed this PowerPoint template to help you summarize your vision, mission, targets, and timeframe in an easily accessible format. Grasp the attention of your employees and stakeholders right away by downloading this template.

Template 6: Five-Year Roadmap for Business Planning

A comprehensive plan of action displays confidence and foresightedness. Therefore, we have curated this content-specific template to help you create a strategic roadmap for your business goals. This template distributes the target phases based on yearly milestones, thereby making it easily understandable. Grab it now!

Template 7: Five Year Business Plan with Roadmap

Take your business to the next level with this five-year business roadmap with checkpoints. It includes sections for sales, product, operations,  and targets set for different team members. It also includes timelines and checkpoints for processes and activities. Download this editable PowerPoint Slide now to streamline your business alignment.

Template 8: Five Year Business Plan With Financial Projection

Make your future financial outcomes expectations loud and clear by using this PowerPoint template. Represent your business planning elements creatively by employing this template. You can even highlight your company’s ongoing functions and practices in a structured way with the assistance of our entirely adaptable PPT template.

Template 9: Five Year Business Plan Implementation Roadmap

The success rate of business plans hugely depends on the plan of action, and this editable five years roadmap of the organization rightly serves the purpose. Encapsulate all the information related to the project in a well-structured manner to obtain maximum efficiency by incorporating this stunning PowerPoint slide. State the critical deliverable, steps involved, time frame, workforce allocation, and lots more in an easy-to-understand manner by utilizing this pre-designed roadmap layout. Download now!

Template 10: Five Year Business Plan with Risk Status

Select this PowerPoint template to predict your future growth. Using this PPT template, you can assess potential risks that can stunt your business development in the coming years. Revamp your venture by utilizing this template as a guiding star. Download it and start with your strategic planning right away!

Having a strategic roadmap for handling your business operations and objectives is the only way to go. You cannot expect high profit and returns on investment without having a clear outline for the next five years of your business. With our stunning business plan ppt templates, you will definitely look confident, assertive, reliable, and foresighted.

FAQs on Five-Year Business Plan

How to write a five year business plan.

Here are some key steps to consider when writing your plan:

Define your mission and vision: Start by articulating your organization's purpose and long-term goals.

Conduct market research : Analyze your industry, identify trends, and understand your target audience.

Evaluate your competition: Analyze your competitors' strengths and weaknesses, and determine how you can differentiate yourself in the marketplace.

Develop a marketing and sales strategy: Outline how you will reach and engage with your target audience and define your pricing strategy.

Create financial projections: Develop a comprehensive financial model that includes revenue and expense projections, as well as cash flow analysis.

Establish a system for measuring progress: Determine key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you track progress towards your goals, and create a plan for reviewing and updating your plan on a regular basis.

What is a good 5-year business plan?

A good 5-year business plan is a comprehensive document that outlines an organization's strategy for achieving its long-term goals. Here are some key elements to include in a good 5-year business plan:

Executive summary: Provide an overview of your organization's mission, vision, and goals, as well as a summary of the key elements of your plan.

Market analysis: Conduct thorough research to understand your industry, target audience, and competition.

Marketing and sales strategy: Outline how you will reach and engage with your target audience, and define your pricing strategy.

Financial projections: Develop a comprehensive financial model that includes revenue and expense projections, as well as cash flow analysis.

Organizational structure: Outline the roles and responsibilities of key personnel, and describe how your organization will be structured to achieve its goals.

Risk management: Identify potential risks and develop strategies to mitigate them.

Performance metrics: Determine key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you track progress towards your goals, and create a plan for reviewing and updating your plan on a regular basis.

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The 6 Steps I Use to Create Five-Year Plans I Can Actually Stick To [+ Expert Tips]

Updated: August 02, 2024

Published: August 01, 2024

As people, we all have big goals — both personal and professional. I’ve been asked in countless interviews about my five-year plan for my career.

I’ve also had lengthy internal monologues about whether I want to buy a house, the countries I want to travel to, and the mountains (literal and figurative) I want to climb.

However, a desire without a plan is just a dream. I want to make sure I make my long-term goals a reality. That’s why I love five-year plans. That’s enough time to take the steps to prepare for lofty accomplishments.

So, in this post, I’ll share my tips for creating five-year plans that you can actually stick to. I’ll also share examples of what these steps look like in practice. Let’s dive in.

Table of Contents

What is a Five-year plan?

Benefits of a five-year plan, what to cover in a five-year plan, five-year plan tips, five-year plan template, how to make a five-year plan, five-year plan common mistakes, five-year plan example.

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A five-year plan is an outline of professional and/or personal goals you want to reach within the next five years. It usually includes broad goals relating to career, relationships, health, and finances that are broken down into action items and milestones.

1. It can give you a fresh start.

Whether professional or personal, a five-year plan can serve as a reset for your life. Who doesn’t like a fresh start?

After all, that’s why New Year’s resolutions are so popular. They give us something to look forward to. There’s also something to be said about writing out a detailed plan. It can be a great motivator to put something in motion.

Personally, I’ve said countless times that I want to be fluent in Spanish. However, it's not until I write a detailed plan for how that will happen that it feels real.

2. It gives you clarity.

Sometimes, a path seems scarier than it actually is because we don’t know what it looks like.

Creating a plan is like pointing a flashlight on a dark road. A more accurate description is that it turns that dark, twisty road into a clear path forward. This doesn’t mean there won’t be any bumps in the road, but at least you’ll know exactly where you’ll land and how to get there.

For example, working for HubSpot was a longtime goal of mine. I took the time to assess why I wanted to work for the company — the great culture and renowned blog pulled me in. Then, I made a plan on how to get here. I started by taking Academy classes and networking.

I never knew if my plan would work out precisely, but I did have time for introspection, giving me clarity on why I liked a company.

3. It serves as a reminder of what’s at stake.

In your daily life, it can be easy to forget that every day, we’re shaping our future. The decisions we make today affect what our lives will look like years from now. Having a visual reminder of this can keep you focused on your goals.

For example, I spoke to my colleague, Kaitlin Milliken about five-year goals she has had. She mentioned that she wanted to see the Philippines and explore the country her family immigrated from.

“When I first made the decision, I was still in college and didn’t have the money or time to make that trip,” Milliken says. “That goal was a great motivator for a lot of smaller choices, like saving, being smart with my vacation time, and making the space to plan the trip.”

4. It helps with professional development.

Having a five-year plan encourages you to think about and plan for the necessary skills and knowledge you will need in the future. This can guide your professional development journey and activities, such as training, education, or gaining specific experiences.

If you need a plan designed to help you with this, grab HubSpot’s free professional development plan to help you understand where you’re at, where you want to go, and how you’ll get there.

5. It helps with risk management and mitigation

If you’re a business owner, having a five-year business plan can help you manage and mitigate risks as much as possible.

By forecasting potential challenges and market changes over a five-year period, you can develop and implement contingency plans, diversify your income streams, adjust your business model in response to market demands, and maintain financial stability.

A five-year business plan makes it easier for you to navigate through potential pitfalls more effectively and sustain growth even in fluctuating economic conditions.

Before you get started with your plan, there are a few things you’ll need to figure out ahead of time.

1. Areas of Focus

Your five-year plan can cover various areas from education, career development, finance, hobbies, or even health. It’s up to you. Don’t feel stuck having to stick to one category and choose the ones that best interest you and fit your needs.

For example, one of my goals is to learn a second language, specifically Spanish. This is a personal goal for me that’s right at the intersection of education and my hobbies.

Putting down your values in writing will help you discover your “why” (more on that later). This step will also help you narrow down what’s most important to you and shape the goals you set for yourself.

Why do I want to learn Spanish? Well, it’s a super helpful language to know if you live in the U.S. Beyond that, I really want to travel throughout Spain. Being fluent in the language would help me better connect with people throughout my journey.

3. Goal Path

Your five-year plan is only as successful as the effort put into creating it. To create a viable plan, it has to be actionable. Once you’ve got an idea of the goals you’d like to include, start researching the path to attaining them.

For example, if you’d like to set a career goal to become a marketing director, start looking at the steps and credentials required. Do you need to skill up? Is there a pathway at your current job? Doing some initial research will set you up for success.

Learning a language involves lots of steps. I decided to buy a few language textbooks and download Duolingo on my phone. Beyond that, I’m researching if there are local classes in my area that I can sign up for. A structured classroom setting can often be helpful for adults learning a second language.

4. HARD Goals

Tackling heartfelt, animated, required, and difficult (HARD) goals can be a rewarding but challenging part of a five-year plan. These types of goals will push you out of your comfort zone and help you achieve things you didn’t think were possible before. Think of these goals as highly ambitious but achievable with a five-year timeline.

Think of HARD goals this way:

• Heartfelt — what reasons are behind achieving this goal?
• Animated — what gets you excited about achieving this goal? Get specific.
• Required — what is it going to take to achieve this goal? What will you need to accomplish in six months to a year to stay on track?
• Difficult — what skills will you need to accomplish this goal, and how will you obtain them?

Let’s apply this to my desire to learn Spanish:

• Heartfelt — I want to learn Spanish so I can communicate with folks who may not be fluent in English and so I can travel to Spanish-speaking countries.
• Animated — the idea of visiting Spain and speaking with the locals gets me excited to learn.
• Required — I know that finding a local Spanish class will help me stay on track and develop a basic understanding of the language. Beyond that, I want to practice every day.
• Difficult — I need to know a substantial number of vocabulary words to become fluent. I will spend time drilling flashcards every day to help me learn more helpful verbs and nouns.

Now that we’ve covered the groundwork, we’ve got more tips to help you create a five-year plan that keeps you motivated and inspired.

If creating a plan from scratch makes your eyes glaze over, check out these tips to help you start getting some ideas on paper. I also asked Kaitlin Milliken, a senior program manager at HubSpot, to share how these tips help her shape her five-year plans.

1. Give yourself space to brainstorm.

To help you focus better when creating your plan, do a bit of pre-work.

Give yourself time to really think about what you’d like to accomplish and the things that are most important to you. For example, you could write out a list of potential goals or ideas and rank them in order of importance, including notes about why they are important.

Milliken often works through this exercise. This helps her decide what she wants to work on, which goals can be accomplished quickly, and which are most complicated and need to be a part of her five-year plan.

“I always start broad. I sit down with a note book and write out what I want to accomplish — totally blue sky. I can organize and narrow this list down later,” she says.

2. Consider separating long-term and short-term goals.

Once you’ve jotted down some goals, decide which are better suited for short or long-term ones.

Completely paying off debt might be a long-term goal, but deciding which debt to tackle first could be a short-term goal. It may also help to divide them up into a 30-60-90 day plan to help best set a timeline.

I asked Milliken how she decides which goals fall into each category. For example, Milliken says she wants to run a half marathon. However, that’s a goal she can work toward in a year.

In contrast, “I want to learn Tagalog — a language I don’t have a background in — and to build the program I run at work to support different departments at HubSpot. These are loftier goals that fit better in a five-year timespan,” she says.

3. Break down annual goals into monthly ones.

Tackling lofty goals can be overwhelming. This is why it’s important to break them down into smaller tasks that are manageable so you don’t get discouraged along the way. Let’s say you want to save $10,000 in a year. You can break that amount down into a recurring monthly payment of $833 or even split it into smaller weekly payments.

Milliken told me that she starts off each year with a lofty set of goals — like writing a few short stories, saving a certain amount of money, and getting a promotion at work.

From there, she decides which goal posts she needs throughout the year to check her progress. For example, she’ll set a savings goal every month.

“I also check in on my long-term goals every six months. Am I spending enough time on professional development to build my leadership skills? Am I on track to manage a team within the next five years?” Milliken explains.

4. Find an accountability partner.

Sometimes, life gets in the way and throws us curve balls — greatly impacting our ability to stay motivated and consistent. Having an accountability partner can help you stay on track.

This could be someone you check in with monthly, a close friend, a family member, or a mentor. Whoever you choose, just make sure it’s someone who will keep you honest. Perhaps they’ll even have their own five-year plan, and you can take this journey together.

“No matter the goal, I tell my best friend Meg. She encourages me to put in the time, celebrates my wins, and is the perfect accountability partner,” Milliken says. “If you’re looking to find your own accountability partner, you’ll want someone who can both keep you on track and be happy for you when you reach your goals.”

5. Don’t be afraid to make adjustments.

Remember that your five-year plan is yours. You can make adjustments as you see fit once you start tracking your progress. If your priorities change, update your plan.

Milliken says her first job out of school was in journalism, so her initial five-year plan for her career focused on being a great reporter. However, “as I worked in the field, I discovered that I loved editing and working with other people,” she says. “I adapted my goals to reflect those new discoveries.”

Milliken notes that her five-year plan changed from working for a top newspaper to finding a role that allows her to work with writers, giving them feedback for improving their work.

If you‘re ready to create your own five-year plan, we’ve got you covered.

HubSpot created the following five-year plan template for you to download.

In it, you'll find a short and long version, both designed to help you break down your plan into actionable goals for each year.

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Kick off your five-year plan with this free template.

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5 Year Business Plan Template

The following detailed overview of a five-year business plan is designed to assist your efforts in creating the structure your business requires. In the business plan template outlined below, you’ll find the essential components of every 5 year business plan template – a company overview, analyses of competitors, industry data and target market demographics. Also included are a financial plan, a marketing plan and an operations plan. The 5 year business plan will provide the strategic roadmap required for ultimate success. Let’s get your five-year business plan started.

Download our Ultimate Business Plan Template here >

Five Year Business Plan Template

Executive summary.

The first step to creating a business plan is, oddly, the ending of it. An executive summary is placed in the front of the business plan; however, it cannot be completed until the fully detailed business plan is in place. At that time, it is used as a specific overview of the business plan. The executive summary allows busy executives to quickly grasp the main ideas and make informed decisions about the business concepts and plans; as such, present succinct, clear details in readable sentences that are defined and positive in tone.

Although placed in the business plan at the end of the process, the executive summary helps drive the project forward. Within the executive summary, an overview of the business, including its mission, goals, and the problem it solves will be highlighted. The competitive advantage, target market, and financial projections will be detailed, as well.

Company Overview

After the executive summary, a full company overview is added into the business plan. Include the basic information about the company, detailing the location, name, mission statement, and the legal structure for the business. Outline the jurisdiction in which the company is registered and add the names of the founders and management team. List the founders and key members of the management team again, highlighting their backgrounds, expertise, and roles within the company. Their background information adds depth of experience to that of yours and reflects well with interested lenders or investors. These facts also offer an informed decision base for those considering working for the business. Finally, the unique selling proposition and competitive advantage of the products or services produced by the business will be detailed.

Industry Analysis

In the next segment of the business plan, an industry analysis is compiled, provided as market research data and analyzed in relation to the business. The outcome of the analysis is included in the business plan. It offers a detailed look at the current state and future prospects of the industry sector, market trends, competitive targets, customer preferences and regulatory influences. The analysis within the business plan is suggestive of positive growth, flexibility, and data-driven outcomes that serve the business. The industry analysis also helps identify growth potential, possible risks, and key challenges that may lie ahead. If needed after reading the industry analysis, a business executive may choose to pivot and reposition plans to make informed choices with better outcomes.

Customer Analysis

In the customer analysis section of the business plan, the vital component of the business strategy is revealed: that of the customers who drive the profit margins. The demographics of customers is highly valuable, as the more an understanding of customers’ preferences, likes, dislikes, habits, purchasing choices, and delivery of products is understood and used in business decisions, the better and stronger the positive outcomes. With all of the input and market research data, an important, deeper understanding of the target market is gained, which enables the business to better tailor products, services and the initial marketing efforts accordingly. The market analysis is not only valuable; it is dependable.

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Competitive Analysis

At this juncture, the competitive analysis and data-driven results are obtained to round out the analyses sections of the business plan. The competitive analysis provides valuable insights into the strengths and weaknesses of key competitors operating in the same market. By evaluating and understanding the competitive landscape, businesses can identify opportunities for differentiation to gain that much-desired competitive edge over competitors. The competitive analysis should also reveal everything available about competitors, including brand reputation, customer loyalty, distribution channels and the financial resources they hold. Because the goal of the business is to capitalize on market opportunities, take note of the environment of every competitor directly in competition with the business and make changes where needed in the unique value propositions offered to customers.

Marketing Plan

Strategic marketing naturally follows the analyses of the business landscape and those who compete within it. Use tools to create a dynamic and strategic marketing plan in this section of the business plan. A strategic marketing analysis is one that utilizes every scrap of data available to form the best message for the target audience. Gathered and pressed into service, the data will inform best practices for marketing methods, and best means of sending those messages to the target audience. Marketing plans will naturally follow well-designed and specific data analysis. Use a variety of means to deliver the marketing messages, according to the strengths of the business and the consumer preferences involved. In short, your marketing strategy will encompass various elements, such as branding, advertising, digital marketing, public relations, and social media to create a cohesive and impactful marketing campaign. The ultimate objective of the marketing plan is to achieve your desired business outcomes. As it should.

Operations Plan

A business plan is not complete without a detailed operations plan. A five-year plan will typically outline the first year and then follow with successively more speculative plans for organization as the years progress; however, some facts relating to manufacturing processes will remain stable and the same throughout. These types of operations can always be included in trend discussions and help stabilize the business overall. Plan the operations functions to align the activities of the various departments or teams with broader organizational objectives. Processes and procedures are the highlights of the operations plan, along with the timelines and scheduling of the implementation of those objectives. Knowing how well the business will actually conduct business five years in the future is the perfect starting place for success right now.

Management Team

Comprised of experienced professionals, the management team is highlighted in detail as the operations plans are revealed. The present key leaders understand the collaboration and strong leadership skills needed to effectively manage and operate the entire team and they will be guided by a customer-centric approach. A detailed description of the skills of team leaders, business partners and executives, along with the relevant professional backgrounds will complete this section of the business plan. You should also detail the operational structure of the company here.

Financial Plan

In the final portion of the business plan, the financial plan is fully extended and specifically detailed to offer an informed snapshot of the health of the business in the present, as well as in the five-year period of sustained growth that is anticipated ahead. It is the overlook of the financial goals, along with the strategies and actions needed to achieve them. The five-year financial projections outlines the financial stability, growth, and long-term sustainability of the business.

The 5 year plan encompasses various key areas that are crucial for success, including revenue generation, expense management, investment strategies, risk assessment, and financial performance monitoring for the business during the years ahead. It also outlines key aspects, such as budgeting, savings, investment plans, and debt management that can adapt to changing circumstances and it maximizes the financial stability and growth projections of the five-year plan. Ultimately, the financial plan serves as a roadmap for informed decision-making and the long-term financial success that extends well beyond the five-year period under discussion.

Crafting a well-thought-out, traditional business plan is the first step in the business planning process and it is vital for any business owner. With our 5 year business plan pdf provided here, a vital and simply inviting business plan can be created for your own purposes and those potential stakeholders who will want to review them. We trust the creation of your business plan will lead to new beginnings, exciting and fulfilling directions and sustained long-term growth in successful years of business ahead.

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Five-year business plan: why you need one and how to write it

What is a five-year business plan, do you actually need a five-year business plan, who is a five-year business plan for, how to write a five-year business plan, five business plan tips from anthony rose, final thoughts, kaylin sullivan.

Many founders roll their eyes at the idea of forecasting the growth of their business for the next five years. However, having a clear plan that sets out your ambitious yet realistic growth targets can help get investors on board.

In this article, we’ll reveal why you need to write a five-year business plan with tips from Anthony Rose, SeedLegals’ CEO and serial entrepreneur.

A five-year business plan gives an overview of what a business does, what it intends to do and how it plans to do it.

It includes everything from vision statements to market research, strategic planning and financial forecasts. The five-year plan helps prospective investors get an idea of whether they feel a business has long term potential.

Founders and investors both know that a five-year business plan includes some artistic licence. You don’t know exactly how things are going to go. Things can take longer than you expect and the economic landscape can shift overnight.

However, there’s still plenty of value in a five-year business plan. If you get your numbers right, you can use the business plan to show investors why they should invest in you and how they could see a return on their time and money.

Your five-year plan is also necessary if you’re applying for SEIS/EIS Advance Assurance . HMRC needs to see a three or five-year business plan in your pitch deck so they can be confident that you actually plan to grow the business.

In the startup space, a five-year business plan is especially useful for founders and investors.

It helps founders strategise how their business is going to work and shows investors how they might get a return on their investment.

Founders can use the business plan to align on the direction of travel with other senior members of the team.

Investors see the five-year business plan as a measure of the market opportunity for the business. If the opportunity looks good, investors are more likely to want to get involved.

It’s a good idea to create two versions of your business plan: a detailed version and a compact general overview.

A detailed plan that covers all aspects of your business can help you gain clarity and refine your goals.

Once you’re clear on what you want to do, the general overview shows investors what your plans are in a digestible way.

What to include in your detailed five-year business plan

The purpose of your five-year plan is to explain the who, what, why and, most importantly, the how behind your company’s plans. The detailed version of your plan should include:

• A description of your business
• Long-term goals
• Short-term goals
• A SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats)
• A competitor analysis
• Details on who your customers are
• What your products and services are and their pricing
• Details on the management team you have and need
• A spreadsheet that details all your company’s financials
• A financial forecast including a line graph depicting growth in revenue
• Investment you require

Once you have that, you can condense it into a general overview.

What to include in your general overview

Creating a general overview helps you to convey the most important information about your business in a concise manner.

When dealing with investors, your time is limited. No investor wants to go through a 20-page business plan. They want to cut to the chase, and founders need to be prepared to accommodate them.

Based on feedback from founders who’ve been through funding rounds themselves, we recommend that you condense your detailed five-year plan into the following:

• A one-page executive summary
• A SWOT analysis
• A line graph showing your revenue growth forecast over 5 years
• A spreadsheet that breaks down all the financials behind that line graph including profit and loss, expenditure and revenue

Your pitch deck for investors should include the line graph, SWOT analysis and executive summary. HMRC will also want to see this info when you apply for SEIS/EIS.

In your pitch, you’ll need to describe your business and point out your business goals, but you don’t need to include all of the finer details from your in-depth business plan at this stage. The financials spreadsheet doesn’t need to be in your pitch deck. It’s only for later on when you meet with investors.

It’s worth having a look at some pitch deck examples for inspiration.

What to include in your line graph

The purpose of the graph is to depict your projected growth in revenue at a glance.

The number of years you show depends on your business’ initial growth rate. If it’s going to take a few years before you generate revenue because you have complex product development to do, you’ll want to forecast far enough into the future to show when the exponential growth happens.

The graph should include:

• Profit forecast over X number of years
• Loss forecast over X number of years

What to include in your financials spreadsheet

This is your opportunity to break down every financial detail behind what’s depicted in the line graph. Your spreadsheet should include:

• All your business costs
• Your revenue projections
• Market size
• Cost of acquiring customers

The more information the better. This is what you’re going to present to investors once they’ve expressed interest in your pitch.

What you present will be a significant factor in whether they invest in you or not. Here’s an idea of what your spreadsheet might look like.

Image source: Brixx

SeedLegals CEO Anthony Rose has been through a fair amount of funding rounds and seen hundreds of pitch decks himself. In the video below, he offers his insights on “The art of the five-year business plan”.

We’ve put Anthony’s thoughts from the video into a written breakdown below to help you digest the information. 

1. Show the potential for ROI

Showing your ambition goes beyond an inspiring vision statement. It’s about creating hype through numbers – the real, grounded kind of hype that makes investors feel excited and confident that the goals can be achieved.

A five-year business plan that’s going to close investments needs to show the founder’s ambitions to grow the business exponentially. The investor is going to want to see that making this investment is worth their while.

Many founders are satisfied with a modest approach. The fact that they can create a good, profitable business that will add value to its market and pay the salaries and bills that need to be paid is what makes them happy.

But an investor might see it as a “hobby business” if you’re not ambitious enough. Your five-year business plan needs to include financial projections that show a steady, exponential increase in your revenue (which means the same for their ROI).

An investor is going to want to see a massive return on investment. In five years they’re going to want to see a 10x or a 50x return on the investment to make it worthwhile, given the risks involved. Anthony Rose Co-founder & CEO, SeedLegals

2. Don’t overpromise

The key here is to get your five-year number just right. Your graph should show a steady increase in revenue, but not at an unachievable rate.

If you’re not delivering on the numbers you projected at the get-go, you’ll have unhappy investors and a lot of changes to make. You will most likely have trouble getting investors on board in the first place if you’re projecting growth at a statistically unlikely rate.

Seeing that founders can run the numbers is an important measure for investors. If the numbers aren’t connecting from one year to the next, or you appear to be losing money altogether, investors aren’t going to have a whole lot of faith in you running your business well.

3. Use the unicorn formula

Before we dive into the formula, it will help to know that a company is classified as a unicorn if it is valued at US$1 billion or more (around £800 million).

The unicorn formula is the growth pathway to becoming a unicorn company, and it goes like this: triple, triple, triple, double, double.

So what does that mean for your five-year business plan? It means that if you can create a graph projecting financial growth at a rate of tripling year-on-year revenue for three years and doubling it for two, you’re on a good, steady growth path towards becoming a unicorn.

At a rate of 10x revenue for your valuation, reaching that (roughly) £100 million in revenue after five years would classify your company as a unicorn.

Not every company intends to become a unicorn, however, so how does this apply if that’s you? Well, the golden nugget in this formula is the rate of growth it suggests. It’s ambitious and steady, which will appeal to investors. So even if you’re not aiming for a unicorn valuation, applying the formula to your financial forecasting will still be beneficial.

The line graph below depicts a hypothetical business’s revenue according to the unicorn formula rate. It’s the shape of the line that’s important here – this is the shape of a healthy growth rate.

4. Spreadsheet the numbers

We covered this in the section on how to write a five-year business plan, so make sure you read and re-read that section. In case you missed it, though, we’ll reiterate the point here.

The most important part of your meetings with investors is presenting a robust breakdown of your company’s financials. Make sure you keep an up-to-date spreadsheet that details current and future income and expenditure.

5. Be honest about where you are now

Be fully transparent about where your business’s revenue is now. Don’t allow for disparity between what is displayed in the graph on your pitch deck and the revenue your business is making today.

Make sure your financial forecasting is up-to-date and begins with where you stand currently. Make sure you update it regularly so you remain confident and transparent whenever you meet with investors.

The five-year business plan still has value. It will help with procuring investment and getting your SEIS/EIS Advance Assurance from HMRC.

The key takeaway is to get your financials just right. Show ambition, grow steadily and be transparent. First-hand advice from people who have been there and done that is extremely valuable, so turn to expert input for help.

At SeedLegals, we have a team of experts who can help you with all the nuances involved in starting and growing your business, so hit the chat button to get in touch. We’ll be happy to guide you and answer any questions.

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How to Create a 5-Year Business Plan in 8 Easy Steps

• March 11, 2024

12 Min Read

As an entrepreneur or a business owner, you know it can be challenging enough to predict business growth for the long term. And the business decisions you make today will shape your company’s future.

Well, having a strategic plan for the next three or even five years will guide you toward long-term business goals and increase the potential for success.

So, why take a chance? Keep a solid five-year business plan with you!

Need help writing a business plan from scratch? Don’t worry;  we’re here to support you with our 5-year business plan template .

This will help you learn more about the business plan for 5 years and what components you should include in it. Also, it allows you to organize ideas, set realistic growth targets, and refine your business strategy that will attract investors.

Sounds good, right? Let’s get started.

Free 5-Year Business Plan Template

Download our 5-year business plan template now and start planning with ease.

What is a 5 Year Business Plan?

A 5-year business plan is a professional document that serves as a strategic roadmap for your company’s future. It outlines business goals, strategies, financial projections, and growth plans for the next five years. 

It helps you set clear objectives, define target customers, allocate resources effectively, mitigate risks, adapt to changing market conditions, and make informed decisions.

Ultimately, a well-developed 5-year plan keeps you on track and drives sustainable growth and profitability over the specified timeframe.

Why do you need a 5 year business plan?

Writing a solid business plan is one of the most important aspects of your entrepreneurial journey.

A 5-year business plan gives you a structural framework to think strategically about your company’s plans over the next few years. It helps you organize your business idea and guide your strategic decision-making.

The following are a few key reasons why it’s valuable to have a 5-year business plan:

Highlight your long-term vision

A 5-year plan helps you articulate your long-term vision and define a set of strategic goals for your business over the next five years. This will allow you to stay focused on your objectives and make smart decisions to navigate the complexities of your business environment.

Build investor confidence

If you’re looking for investors or stakeholders to fund your business expansion, a well-written 5-year plan is necessary. It demonstrates your commitment to long-term growth and assures investors that your business will make profits. So, this will increase their confidence and belief in your long-term strategy.

Mitigate potential risks

Analyzing and identifying potential risks is the key aspect of any business. So, an actionable plan helps you develop strategies to mitigate those risks and ensure your business continuity. If there is economic volatility, regulatory transitions, or technical disruptions, a 5-year business plan helps you anticipate and prepare for business challenges.

Promote strategic planning

A good 5-year business plan enables you to think about the business and how to attain sustainable growth and success over the next few years. It also helps you make strategic hiring decisions and anticipate future staffing needs. By identifying market trends, competitors, and internal capabilities, you can enhance strategies to capitalize on opportunities and reduce potential risks.

Now that you know why a business plan is necessary, it’s time to understand what to include in a detailed 5-year plan.

What to include in your detailed five-year business plan

1. executive summary.

An executive summary is a brief introduction to your 5-year business plan and summarizes each component you mentioned in the document.

Though it is the first section, it is written in the last, since it provides a high-level overview of the complete business plan.

The executive summary is the introductory section of the plan, so its primary goal is to quickly attract readers and convince them to delve further into the rest of the plan.

Here are a few details you may consider including in your executive summary:

• A quick overview of your business idea and objectives
• Your company’s mission and vision statements
• Industry analysis and market research
• Sales and marketing plan
• Key performance indicators
• Introduction of your management team
• Financial forecasts for the next five years

Remember that you keep your summary simple, concise, and compelling enough to build investors or readers trust.

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2. Business Overview

As its name indicates, the business overview section provides a detailed description of your company. It covers all the essential information, from a business idea to its long-term goals.

Since you’ll give a brief company description in the executive summary, this chapter would be an expansion on it, providing an in-depth understanding of your business.

So, this section makes it easier for readers or potential business partners to quickly understand and confirm the nature of your business, such as what your company does, who the potential customers are, and how you plan to reach your objectives.

You may include all the following crucial elements in this section:

• The type of small business you operate
• A brief history or background details of your business
• Achievements or milestones you’ve achieved
• Business legal structure(s-corp, LLC, sole proprietorship, etc.)
• Mission statement
• Short-term goals and long-term objectives

3. Market Analysis

Industry analysis and market research is a detailed breakdown of the external business environment. It provides a thorough understanding of the specific industry or sector in which your business will operate.

This section helps your readers or potential investors to easily understand the broader industry, target customers, emerging trends, and market demands.

Apart from that, it helps you and your team to analyze and identify the untapped key areas in the market and develop strategies to stand out from the competitors.

Here are some specific details you may include:

• Market size and growth potential
• Target market
• Ideal customers, along with their preferences and buying habits
• Competitors’ research and SWOT analysis
• Industry trends
• Regulatory environment

4. Product and Services

In the product and services section, you may provide details of your product or service range, main features, pricing, and more. It helps you demonstrate the current capabilities of your business and highlight the USPs.

So, you may consider adding the below points in this section:

• Product/service description
• Pricing details
• Quality standards
• Future product development plan

While you’re planning how to start your own business, you have to explore the market and determine how your offerings will encounter customer problems and satisfy their needs better than competitors.

5. Sales and Marketing Strategies

Your sales and marketing plan outlines the strategies you’ll use to reach the target audience and how you’ll bring more customers by promoting your products/services to them.

A well-written marketing plan will encourage you to create effective campaigns and simplify your marketing efforts while maintaining the marketing budget and maximizing return on investment.

Thus, you may describe a list of sales strategies and promotional tactics to attract new customers and retain existing ones.

Here’s a list of key components you may include in this section:

• Target audience
• Marketing strategy
• Sales approach
• Sales and marketing goals
• Customer retention program

6. Operations Plan

As you’ve mentioned your business goals in the previous sections, now it’s time to define how you’ll meet those goals.

In your operations plan, you’ll need to outline all the details of everyday business operations and activities. This will help you and your team to define responsibilities, daily tasks, and short-term goals you plan to achieve, keeping track of your future goals.

Well, here is some distinct information you should include in the operations plan:

• Staffing and training
• Operational process
• Supply chain & Inventory management
• Facilities and equipment

Note that your operations plan is a living document, you may adjust and update it as needed.

7. Management Team

A well-trained and experienced management team is crucial for driving your business ahead.

So, highlight your business owners and key executives in this section, along with their roles & responsibilities, educational qualifications, industry experience, and how you plan to compensate them.

It allows readers to easily understand your management team’s background, skills, and expertise that help you grow your company and make informed business decisions.

The following information you may consider including in the management team section:

• Company owner profile
• Resume-styled summary of key members
• Organizational structure
• Compensation plan
• Advisory board members

8. 5-year Financial Projections

A financial plan is the most crucial aspect of your five-year business plan, as potential investors or lenders want to know more about your business profit margins.

It provides a detailed blueprint of your business’s 5-year financial reports broken out both monthly or quarterly for the first year of operation and then annually.

While creating an in-depth financial plan for the next 5-years, you’ll need to highlight all the below factors:

• Revenue forecast
• Cost estimates
• Profitability analysis
• Cash flow projections
• Break-even analysis
• Business ratios

In addition to that, if you’re seeking funding or investors, you will need to summarize exactly how much money you need, how you plan to use these funds, and how you pay it back.

Well, having realistic financial forecasts at your hand can help you evaluate your business’s financial health and growth potential in the long run.

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Tips for creating a five-year business plan

Now that you understand what to include in a business plan, it’s time to consider how you’ll actually create the document. Here are some tips for drafting a comprehensive five-year business plan.

This will help you prepare a business plan that serves its purpose and can be an easy reference for the years ahead.

Conduct thorough analysis

Conduct a thorough analysis of the market, competition, internal capabilities, and the current financial situation of your business before you finalize your five-year plan. Also, identify your strengths and address weaknesses. This helps you pinpoint potential risks and opportunities that impact your business and strategic decisions for the next few years.

Set realistic financial goals

While setting your business objectives, it’s important to define specific, measurable, and achievable goals that you can accomplish in the years ahead. Try to consider a few factors, such as marker conditions, emerging trends, and your business capabilities when setting revenue targets, profit margins, and other financial milestones. This will help you stay focused and motivated.

Demonstrate the potential for ROI

A 5-year plan should effectively show the investors and stakeholders that your business has the potential for return on investment(ROI). It will help you outline how your strategic initiatives will generate revenue and profitability over the next five years. So you can provide a clear opportunity for investment and support.

Develop contingency plans

Developing a contingency plan is crucial for the potential challenges that may arise over the next few years. You can consider several factors like economic downturns, supply chain disruptions, regulatory changes, or other unforeseen events. This will mitigate the impact of these risks and ensure that your business runs smoothly even in challenging circumstances.

Ensure clear communicate

A detailed five-year plan allows entrepreneurs and business owners to clearly communicate their business goals, milestones, and strategies. So this will be easy to understand for all the stakeholders, including potential partners, investors, and employees. You can also use charts, graphs, and visuals to share intricate details and make your plan more compelling.

Review and update regularly

Once you have crafted your entire business plan, you should regularly schedule reviews to assess progress, update assumptions, and update strategies as needed. Since the business plan is a living document, it evolves over time based on new facts or varying business environments. By revising and updating your plan, you make sure that it will remain relevant and effective.

So, try to keep in mind these few factors while creating a 5-year plan. Now, let’s move forward and explore several types of business plan templates.

Examples of 5-year business plan templates

As there are several types of 5-year business plan templates available, no two business owners build the same 5-year plans.

This is so because the business plan template that works best for your company depends on the age of your business, objectives, and the purpose behind using the plan.

Here are a few examples that are tailored to different aspects of business planning:

Traditional 5-year business plan template

This kind of business plan template follows the standard format as you establish a new business or startup, define the target audience, and market your products/services. It includes lengthy sections about company overview, market analysis, marketing and sales strategies, or financial forecasting. So, this will provide a detailed plan for your business over the next 5 years.

Strategic plan for growth and expansion

When you’ve been running the business for a few years and thinking about expansion or growth, a strategic growth plan might be your choice. It will help you approach your growth strategically and provide the best opportunities to identify risks and techniques to mitigate them. So, this type of template helps align your business activities with long-term objectives.

Simple one-page plan

As the name suggests, it is a single-page business plan that helps you provide a high-level overview of your business to the partners, investors, or suppliers. Since it is shorter in length, it highlights the most crucial points, and even writing a one-page business plan can be much simpler and quicker compared to the traditional business plan.

Start preparing your business plan

Finally, with the help of details and resources provided in this guide, you’re well-equipped to start an exciting journey of preparing a successful 5-year business plan.

Whether you’re an experienced entrepreneur or a new business owner, you can consider using a business plan app like Upmetrics to streamline your business planning approach.

Upmetrics is a user-friendly platform that provides easy-to-follow guides, 400+ business plan examples, and AI support to create an actionable plan in manageable steps. It also helps you develop realistic financial projections if needed or when you feel stuck with a financial plan.

So, start writing your plan today and bring your vision to life!

Make your plan in half the time & twice the impact with Upmetrics

Fill-in-the-blanks, AI-assistance, and automatic financials make it easy.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is it good to make a 5 year plan.

Creating a 5-year or long-term plan is highly beneficial for your businesses. It helps you set clear goals, anticipate potential risks & challenges, develop realistic financial outlook, demonstrate growth potential to investors, and build their confidence. So, it guides you in the right direction to attain sustainable growth and success over the long term. 

How much detail should I include in the financial projections?

The following are a few key elements that you need to include in your financial projections:

• Sales forecast
• Expenses budget
• Cash flow statement
• Profit and loss statement (Income statement)
• Balance sheet

How long should my 5-year business plan be?

The length of a 5-year business plan typically ranges from 15-35 pages and beyond as it depends on your purpose, business concept, objectives, resources you plan to use, and the strategies you will need to achieve your business goals.

Can I write a business plan myself?

Of course, you can write your business plan by yourself. If you are new to the planning process, you may get help from various resources available. You may consider including business plan software, online guides, templates, strategic planning sessions, and professional writers.

What's the best way to format my 5-year plan?

The best way to format your 5-year plan depends on your specific needs, target market, and business strategy. You may follow the below guidelines to create a professional-looking business plan:

• Write a compelling executive summary
• Provide a detailed company overview
• Conduct thorough market and industry analysis
• Describe the products and services
• Outline sales and marketing strategy
• Summarize operations plan
• Introduce your management team
• Present 5-year financial forecast

About the Author

Upmetrics Team

Upmetrics is the #1 business planning software that helps entrepreneurs and business owners create investment-ready business plans using AI. We regularly share business planning insights on our blog. Check out the Upmetrics blog for such interesting reads. Read more

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Featured Reads

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• What is strategic planning? A 5-step gu ...

What is strategic planning? A 5-step guide

Strategic planning is a process through which business leaders map out their vision for their organization’s growth and how they’re going to get there. In this article, we'll guide you through the strategic planning process, including why it's important, the benefits and best practices, and five steps to get you from beginning to end.

Strategic planning is a process through which business leaders map out their vision for their organization’s growth and how they’re going to get there. The strategic planning process informs your organization’s decisions, growth, and goals.

Strategic planning helps you clearly define your company’s long-term objectives—and maps how your short-term goals and work will help you achieve them. This, in turn, gives you a clear sense of where your organization is going and allows you to ensure your teams are working on projects that make the most impact. Think of it this way—if your goals and objectives are your destination on a map, your strategic plan is your navigation system.

In this article, we walk you through the 5-step strategic planning process and show you how to get started developing your own strategic plan.

How to build an organizational strategy

Get our free ebook and learn how to bridge the gap between mission, strategic goals, and work at your organization.

What is strategic planning?

Strategic planning is a business process that helps you define and share the direction your company will take in the next three to five years. During the strategic planning process, stakeholders review and define the organization’s mission and goals, conduct competitive assessments, and identify company goals and objectives. The product of the planning cycle is a strategic plan, which is shared throughout the company.

What is a strategic plan?

A strategic plan is the end result of the strategic planning process. At its most basic, it’s a tool used to define your organization’s goals and what actions you’ll take to achieve them.

Typically, your strategic plan should include: 

Your company’s mission statement

Your organizational goals, including your long-term goals and short-term, yearly objectives

Any plan of action, tactics, or approaches you plan to take to meet those goals

What are the benefits of strategic planning?

Strategic planning can help with goal setting and decision-making by allowing you to map out how your company will move toward your organization’s vision and mission statements in the next three to five years. Let’s circle back to our map metaphor. If you think of your company trajectory as a line on a map, a strategic plan can help you better quantify how you’ll get from point A (where you are now) to point B (where you want to be in a few years).

When you create and share a clear strategic plan with your team, you can:

Build a strong organizational culture by clearly defining and aligning on your organization’s mission, vision, and goals.

Align everyone around a shared purpose and ensure all departments and teams are working toward a common objective.

Proactively set objectives to help you get where you want to go and achieve desired outcomes.

Promote a long-term vision for your company rather than focusing primarily on short-term gains.

Ensure resources are allocated around the most high-impact priorities.

Define long-term goals and set shorter-term goals to support them.

Assess your current situation and identify any opportunities—or threats—allowing your organization to mitigate potential risks.

Create a proactive business culture that enables your organization to respond more swiftly to emerging market changes and opportunities.

What are the 5 steps in strategic planning?

The strategic planning process involves a structured methodology that guides the organization from vision to implementation. The strategic planning process starts with assembling a small, dedicated team of key strategic planners—typically five to 10 members—who will form the strategic planning, or management, committee. This team is responsible for gathering crucial information, guiding the development of the plan, and overseeing strategy execution.

Once you’ve established your management committee, you can get to work on the planning process. 

Step 1: Assess your current business strategy and business environment

Before you can define where you’re going, you first need to define where you are. Understanding the external environment, including market trends and competitive landscape, is crucial in the initial assessment phase of strategic planning.

To do this, your management committee should collect a variety of information from additional stakeholders, like employees and customers. In particular, plan to gather:

Relevant industry and market data to inform any market opportunities, as well as any potential upcoming threats in the near future.

Customer insights to understand what your customers want from your company—like product improvements or additional services.

Employee feedback that needs to be addressed—whether about the product, business practices, or the day-to-day company culture.

Consider different types of strategic planning tools and analytical techniques to gather this information, such as:

A balanced scorecard to help you evaluate four major elements of a business: learning and growth, business processes, customer satisfaction, and financial performance.

A SWOT analysis to help you assess both current and future potential for the business (you’ll return to this analysis periodically during the strategic planning process). 

To fill out each letter in the SWOT acronym, your management committee will answer a series of questions:

What does your organization currently do well?

What separates you from your competitors?

What are your most valuable internal resources?

What tangible assets do you have?

What is your biggest strength? 

Weaknesses:

What does your organization do poorly?

What do you currently lack (whether that’s a product, resource, or process)?

What do your competitors do better than you?

What, if any, limitations are holding your organization back?

What processes or products need improvement? 

Opportunities:

What opportunities does your organization have?

How can you leverage your unique company strengths?

Are there any trends that you can take advantage of?

How can you capitalize on marketing or press opportunities?

Is there an emerging need for your product or service? 

What emerging competitors should you keep an eye on?

Are there any weaknesses that expose your organization to risk?

Have you or could you experience negative press that could reduce market share?

Is there a chance of changing customer attitudes towards your company? 

Step 2: Identify your company’s goals and objectives

To begin strategy development, take into account your current position, which is where you are now. Then, draw inspiration from your vision, mission, and current position to identify and define your goals—these are your final destination. 

To develop your strategy, you’re essentially pulling out your compass and asking, “Where are we going next?” “What’s the ideal future state of this company?” This can help you figure out which path you need to take to get there.

During this phase of the planning process, take inspiration from important company documents, such as:

Your mission statement, to understand how you can continue moving towards your organization’s core purpose.

Your vision statement, to clarify how your strategic plan fits into your long-term vision.

Your company values, to guide you towards what matters most towards your company.

Your competitive advantages, to understand what unique benefit you offer to the market.

Your long-term goals, to track where you want to be in five or 10 years.

Your financial forecast and projection, to understand where you expect your financials to be in the next three years, what your expected cash flow is, and what new opportunities you will likely be able to invest in.

Step 3: Develop your strategic plan and determine performance metrics

Now that you understand where you are and where you want to go, it’s time to put pen to paper. Take your current business position and strategy into account, as well as your organization’s goals and objectives, and build out a strategic plan for the next three to five years. Keep in mind that even though you’re creating a long-term plan, parts of your plan should be created or revisited as the quarters and years go on.

As you build your strategic plan, you should define:

Company priorities for the next three to five years, based on your SWOT analysis and strategy.

Yearly objectives for the first year. You don’t need to define your objectives for every year of the strategic plan. As the years go on, create new yearly objectives that connect back to your overall strategic goals . 

Related key results and KPIs. Some of these should be set by the management committee, and some should be set by specific teams that are closer to the work. Make sure your key results and KPIs are measurable and actionable. These KPIs will help you track progress and ensure you’re moving in the right direction.

Budget for the next year or few years. This should be based on your financial forecast as well as your direction. Do you need to spend aggressively to develop your product? Build your team? Make a dent with marketing? Clarify your most important initiatives and how you’ll budget for those.

A high-level project roadmap . A project roadmap is a tool in project management that helps you visualize the timeline of a complex initiative, but you can also create a very high-level project roadmap for your strategic plan. Outline what you expect to be working on in certain quarters or years to make the plan more actionable and understandable.

Step 4: Implement and share your plan

Now it’s time to put your plan into action. Strategy implementation involves clear communication across your entire organization to make sure everyone knows their responsibilities and how to measure the plan’s success. 

Make sure your team (especially senior leadership) has access to the strategic plan, so they can understand how their work contributes to company priorities and the overall strategy map. We recommend sharing your plan in the same tool you use to manage and track work, so you can more easily connect high-level objectives to daily work. If you don’t already, consider using a work management platform .  

A few tips to make sure your plan will be executed without a hitch: 

Communicate clearly to your entire organization throughout the implementation process, to ensure all team members understand the strategic plan and how to implement it effectively. 

Define what “success” looks like by mapping your strategic plan to key performance indicators.

Ensure that the actions outlined in the strategic plan are integrated into the daily operations of the organization, so that every team member's daily activities are aligned with the broader strategic objectives.

Utilize tools and software—like a work management platform—that can aid in implementing and tracking the progress of your plan.

Regularly monitor and share the progress of the strategic plan with the entire organization, to keep everyone informed and reinforce the importance of the plan.

Establish regular check-ins to monitor the progress of your strategic plan and make adjustments as needed. 

Step 5: Revise and restructure as needed

Once you’ve created and implemented your new strategic framework, the final step of the planning process is to monitor and manage your plan.

Remember, your strategic plan isn’t set in stone. You’ll need to revisit and update the plan if your company changes directions or makes new investments. As new market opportunities and threats come up, you’ll likely want to tweak your strategic plan. Make sure to review your plan regularly—meaning quarterly and annually—to ensure it’s still aligned with your organization’s vision and goals.

Keep in mind that your plan won’t last forever, even if you do update it frequently. A successful strategic plan evolves with your company’s long-term goals. When you’ve achieved most of your strategic goals, or if your strategy has evolved significantly since you first made your plan, it might be time to create a new one.

Build a smarter strategic plan with a work management platform

To turn your company strategy into a plan—and ultimately, impact—make sure you’re proactively connecting company objectives to daily work. When you can clarify this connection, you’re giving your team members the context they need to get their best work done. 

A work management platform plays a pivotal role in this process. It acts as a central hub for your strategic plan, ensuring that every task and project is directly tied to your broader company goals. This alignment is crucial for visibility and coordination, allowing team members to see how their individual efforts contribute to the company’s success. 

By leveraging such a platform, you not only streamline workflow and enhance team productivity but also align every action with your strategic objectives—allowing teams to drive greater impact and helping your company move toward goals more effectively. 

Strategic planning FAQs

Still have questions about strategic planning? We have answers.

Why do I need a strategic plan?

A strategic plan is one of many tools you can use to plan and hit your goals. It helps map out strategic objectives and growth metrics that will help your company be successful.

When should I create a strategic plan?

You should aim to create a strategic plan every three to five years, depending on your organization’s growth speed.

Since the point of a strategic plan is to map out your long-term goals and how you’ll get there, you should create a strategic plan when you’ve met most or all of them. You should also create a strategic plan any time you’re going to make a large pivot in your organization’s mission or enter new markets. 

What is a strategic planning template?

A strategic planning template is a tool organizations can use to map out their strategic plan and track progress. Typically, a strategic planning template houses all the components needed to build out a strategic plan, including your company’s vision and mission statements, information from any competitive analyses or SWOT assessments, and relevant KPIs.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. business plan?

A business plan can help you document your strategy as you’re getting started so every team member is on the same page about your core business priorities and goals. This tool can help you document and share your strategy with key investors or stakeholders as you get your business up and running.

You should create a business plan when you’re: 

Just starting your business

Significantly restructuring your business

If your business is already established, you should create a strategic plan instead of a business plan. Even if you’re working at a relatively young company, your strategic plan can build on your business plan to help you move in the right direction. During the strategic planning process, you’ll draw from a lot of the fundamental business elements you built early on to establish your strategy for the next three to five years.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. mission and vision statements?

Your strategic plan, mission statement, and vision statements are all closely connected. In fact, during the strategic planning process, you will take inspiration from your mission and vision statements in order to build out your strategic plan.

Simply put: 

A mission statement summarizes your company’s purpose.

A vision statement broadly explains how you’ll reach your company’s purpose.

A strategic plan pulls in inspiration from your mission and vision statements and outlines what actions you’re going to take to move in the right direction. 

For example, if your company produces pet safety equipment, here’s how your mission statement, vision statement, and strategic plan might shake out:

Mission statement: “To ensure the safety of the world’s animals.” 

Vision statement: “To create pet safety and tracking products that are effortless to use.” 

Your strategic plan would outline the steps you’re going to take in the next few years to bring your company closer to your mission and vision. For example, you develop a new pet tracking smart collar or improve the microchipping experience for pet owners. 

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. company objectives?

Company objectives are broad goals. You should set these on a yearly or quarterly basis (if your organization moves quickly). These objectives give your team a clear sense of what you intend to accomplish for a set period of time. 

Your strategic plan is more forward-thinking than your company goals, and it should cover more than one year of work. Think of it this way: your company objectives will move the needle towards your overall strategy—but your strategic plan should be bigger than company objectives because it spans multiple years.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. a business case?

A business case is a document to help you pitch a significant investment or initiative for your company. When you create a business case, you’re outlining why this investment is a good idea, and how this large-scale project will positively impact the business. 

You might end up building business cases for things on your strategic plan’s roadmap—but your strategic plan should be bigger than that. This tool should encompass multiple years of your roadmap, across your entire company—not just one initiative.

What’s the difference between a strategic plan vs. a project plan?

A strategic plan is a company-wide, multi-year plan of what you want to accomplish in the next three to five years and how you plan to accomplish that. A project plan, on the other hand, outlines how you’re going to accomplish a specific project. This project could be one of many initiatives that contribute to a specific company objective which, in turn, is one of many objectives that contribute to your strategic plan. 

What’s the difference between strategic management vs. strategic planning?

A strategic plan is a tool to define where your organization wants to go and what actions you need to take to achieve those goals. Strategic planning is the process of creating a plan in order to hit your strategic objectives.

Strategic management includes the strategic planning process, but also goes beyond it. In addition to planning how you will achieve your big-picture goals, strategic management also helps you organize your resources and figure out the best action plans for success. 

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Going somewhere? Write the 5-year plan you need to achieve it

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What is a 5 year plan?

The benefits of creating a 5 year plan, how to create a 5 year plan in 6 easy steps, 5 year plan examples.

You may have heard of SMART goal setting (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound goals), but have you ever heard of HARD goal setting?

Society has been pushing SMART goals since the early ’80s, but a 2020 study found that people who set SMART goals are much less likely to love their jobs , while people who set HARD goals are 53% more likely to love their jobs. 

But, what are HARD goals? HARD goals are defined as: 

• Heartfelt 
• Animated 
• Required 
• Difficult 

They are goals for which you have an emotional connection, strong visualization, great urgency, and difficulty. 

While there are laudable aspects of SMART goals, the study shows serious problems regarding the ‘achievable’ and realistic’ aspects of SMART goal-setting. 

Methodologies that emphasize creating difficult goals are far more likely to be successful and generate higher employee engagement.

In this article, we’ll show you how to use HARD goals to make a 5 year plan, as well as show you two 5 year plan examples.

A 5 year plan is a personal and/or professional list of goals that you want to achieve in the next 5 years. 

Oftentimes, 5 year plans include smaller, concrete goals, to help you achieve the larger goals on your list. 

For example, if a long-term goal is to buy a bigger house, then a smaller goal might include setting aside a certain amount of money each month to go toward a deposit on a home loan. 

Or, if one of your long-term goals is to be a certified nurse, then a smaller goal might include finding the best nursing program in your area or applying for a student loan.

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One of the best things about a 5 year plan is that it can significantly motivate you to create the life you want to live. Notice we said “create the life “ not just “achieve the goal.” A 5 year plan that works for you will be more effective if you think of your life holistically — how do you want to feel? What values will you be living? — as you create it. 

Whatever the specific goals you have in mind — whether it’s starting a business, becoming certified or developing expertise, competing in an event, having a child, or taking a big trip — a 5 year plan can help you move from dreaming into doing, wish into a reality. 

Here are some other benefits of creating a 5 year plan:

• It creates a starting point for a career, start-up idea, or personal goal . If you have a goal without a plan, it may not ever happen. But, if you know you want to be a real estate broker by 2026, you’re in a better position to start the process and take actionable steps to achieve that.
• It helps you stay focused and aligned with your ambitions, rather than your dreams constantly hanging out in the back seat. 
• It’s a consistent reminder of what you’re aiming toward, and what you need to do to get there. 

The trick is: keep your plan as visible as possible, make sure it’s what you deeply desire, and make sure your goals are specific, measurable, time-bound, and HARD. 

What should be included in a 5 year plan? 

Grab a pen and a piece of paper. Visualize your life 5 years from now, and write down everything you see without thinking or judging . If any fears, doubts, or negative emotions come up, that’s normal. The key is to ignore them and not attribute any meaning to them.

Use the following categories to help you write your complete brainstorm. 

How do you want your nutritional health , mental fitness , physical health , and mental health to look in 5 years?

Are you interested in being vegan? Do you want to lose weight? Do you want to start a yoga practice ? Would you like to regularly meet with a therapist? 

Relationships

Imagine your future professional relationships, friendships, and familial relationships. What do you want them to look like?

Do you want to join a networking group? Are you interested in starting a book club? Do you want to adopt a child? Do you want to take more trips with your partner?

Visualize your financial goals in these buckets: 

• Bills 
• Everyday expenses (i.e. groceries) 
• Flexible spending (i.e. entertainment) 
• Emergency savings 
• Goal savings 
• Investments 

What do you see?

Will you be contributing higher amounts to your 401(k)? Are you planning on saving for higher education? What do you want your emergency savings to look like? Do you want to save for a big trip?

Career/business

What are your career and business aspirations?

Do you picture yourself leading a huge team or an entire corporation? Do you want to be a digital nomad? Are you planning on starting a blog? 

The truth is, the world of business and how people buy and use goods and services is constantly changing — and fast. Don’t get hung up on roles and titles. Especially if you’re early in your career, you will discover career aspirations and opportunities that don’t even exist today. That being said, spend time thinking about what types of activities interest you, what type of environment you enjoy, what type of impact you want to make day-to-day.

If you’re feeling stuck about your career goals, consider:

• Taking career assessments
• Making a list of various career paths
• Finding the overlap between things you like and what companies are hiring for
• Working with mentors
• Building your network
• Creating your own job or business that lines up with your interests
• Listing your passions, values, skills, and interests, then finding or creating jobs that match some parts of the list

If you’re still unsure about your dream job, don’t worry. Go after jobs you’re interested in, learn from them, and eventually, you’ll come across pursuits you’re excited about. Many people also worry if they don’t have a passion. The reality is that pursuing interests and immersing yourself in the work is a good way to discover and develop passion . It’s also okay if you’re multi-passionate and interested in several jobs. 

Personal/spiritual/religious development

How do you want to grow personally and/or spiritually?

Are you interested in starting a home church? Do you want to work with a life coach or career coach? Do you want to meditate more? Would you like to start a gratitude or prayer practice? Do you want to build resilience ? 

Environment/organization/space/home

How do you picture your future environment?

Are you living in a tropical bungalow in Bali? Are you in a newly decorated and renovated home? Do you have a custom pool in your backyard? Are you living with your family to save money? Are you embracing minimalism?

Recreation/fun

What kinds of hobbies will you have in the future?

Will you be snowboarding every winter and surfing every summer? Are you interested in joining a soccer league? Do you want to take up cooking or art classes? 

Service/contribution

What kind of meaningful contribution would you like to be a part of?

Are you interested in volunteering for a vegetable co-op? Will you be tutoring kids on the weekends? Being a mentor ? Do you want to buy monthly groceries for one of your friends in need until they get back on their feet?

• Focus your plan
• Consider potential goals
• Determine your 'why?'
• Identify annual goals and create monthly goals
• Research how to reach your goals
• Adjust and revisit as needed

Here’s how to use your notes to create your plan:

1. Focus your plan

Take a look at your notes and decide which specific areas to focus on. 

You might decide that you’d rather focus on a few areas, like your health and career, or you might decide that you want to focus on all areas. 

Once you decide, grab a piece of paper for every area you plan to focus on and write the area of growth at the top of each. 

For example, if you decide just to focus on health and money, you’ll write ‘health’ at the top of your first paper and ‘money’ at the top of your second paper. 

2. Consider potential goals

Next, divide each paper into two columns. The left column will be for ‘goals,’ and the right column will be for ‘action steps’ or ‘skills.’ 

Then, decide which goals you want to achieve for each category. Remember that ‘specific’, ‘measurable’, and ‘time-bound’ are positive aspects of SMART goals. That said, the ‘achievable’ and ‘realistic’ aspects of SMART goals can deter you from going after more audacious goals. 

Challenge yourself to leave your comfort zone with HARD goals. 

This doesn’t mean setting goals with no chance of success. But, setting goals with, let’s say, a 50/50 chance of success is difficult and ambitious enough to give you a real sense of accomplishment when you succeed.

For example, on your ‘health’ paper, let’s say you decide to write the following in the ‘goals’ column: 

• Be more active
• Increase nutrients 

Then, you might write the following in the ‘action steps’ or ‘skills’ column: 

• Eat raw and organic fruits and vegetables three times a day 
• Walk for two hours a day
• Take a daily multivitamin and add superfoods to morning smoothies 

Next, decide between long-term and short term goals:

Review your list of goals. Decide which are better suited for short-term goals and which are better suited for long-term goals. 

For example, you might decide that being a teacher in Peru is a long-term goal while researching places to live in Peru is a short-term goal. You might start outlining your short- and long-term goals with a 30-60-90 day plan . 

3. Determine your ‘why?’

What’s your big ‘why?’ Why do you want to be a Teaching English Foreign Language (TEFL) teacher in Peru? 

Write your reason down and hang it in a place where you’ll see it daily. 

For example, “I want to be a TEFL teacher in Peru, so I can learn Spanish, help students develop their English skills, and fulfill my dream of exploring South America.”

4. Identify annual goals and create monthly goals

First, establish annual goals that will help you reach your 5 year goals. 

For example, if one of your 5 year goals is to adopt a child, then your first annual goal will probably consist of setting interviews with adoption agencies.

Next, break down your annual goals into monthly goals. 

For example, if your annual goal is becoming a TEFL teacher in Peru, your monthly breakdown could look like this:

• Month 1: Research reputable TEFL programs and set online appointments with TEFL advisors to decide which program you like best
• Months 2-3: Take your TEFL course, study for exams, and write essays
• Month 4: Take your final TEFL exam and wait for your certificate 
• Months 5: Edit your resume and look for a short TEFL internship
• Month 6: Intern with a TEFL academy and ask for feedback from your mentors
• Month 7: Create a lesson plan portfolio and start looking for jobs
• Month 8: Set up job interviews 
• Month 9-10: Land a job from one of your interviews and buy your plane tickets
• Month 11: Move to Peru, find a furnished apartment, and get to know your neighborhood
• Month 12: Start work at your new job as a TEFL teacher 

5. Research how to reach your goals

Next, research the best ways to reach your goals. 

If you plan on moving to Peru, are there some YouTube channels you can check out with tips on how to move? If you plan on creating a start-up, can you meet with some start-up experts that can mentor you? If you plan on learning how to bake macarons, is there a French macaron cookbook you can buy?

6. Adjust and revisit as needed

Life is full of unexpected twists and turns. While the 5 year plan is designed to help you stay focused and persist despite bumps and detours, sometimes the unexpected is you.

As you start working on your goals, you may realize that your interests and passions don't quite align. This is where self-directed learning can help.

Plan for periodic review, reflection, and adjustment as part of life. If your long-range plan still feels right, zoom in to your monthly goals. Decide if your monthly goals are working or if you need to adjust them.

For example, you might find that trying to conduct online interviews with a Peruvian academy is impossible. So you could decide to fly out early to meet directors in person instead. 

You may also decide that creating weekly or even daily goals is essential to hitting your monthly goals.

Revisit and revise your plan as often as needed (at least once a year). You might be surprised at how fast you reach some goals while other goals might take a bit longer than expected.

Here's an example of a 5 year plan for a student interested in being a Certified Public Accountant (CPA):

Here’s a personal 5 year plan example for someone interested in becoming fluent in Spanish:

Creating a 5 year plan is one of the best ways to see your dreams come to life. 

At BetterUp, we love seeing individuals reach their fullest potential and achieve their dreams. Request a demo today to find out more.

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Maggie Wooll is a researcher, author, and speaker focused on the evolving future of work. Formerly the lead researcher at the Deloitte Center for the Edge, she holds a Bachelor of Science in Education from Princeton University and an MBA from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. Maggie is passionate about creating better work and greater opportunities for all.

The 3 year plan: Build a roadmap to success

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How to Develop a 5-Year Career Plan

• Mary McNevin, Ed. D.

Stop setting annual goals, and start thinking longer term.

Having a long-term plan for your career can help you reduce career-related stress, increase your perceived employability, and allow you to connect more deeply with your purpose. But how do you move beyond yearly career goals and create a five-year plan?

• Brainstorm. Start by thinking about how you want your career to develop and what you need to do to get there. This requires self-reflection. You’ll need to identify your primary goal, your passions, how your existing skills contribute to both those things, and your areas for improvement.
• Gather feedback. We’re not aways the best judges of our own capabilities and strengths. That’s why it can be important early in your planning process to gather feedback from your superiors, mentors, and peers. They may help you discover career opportunities you never considered for yourself, clue you into strengths you may be overlooking, and share insights regarding your areas for growth and development.
• Map it out. After doing some self-reflection and gathering feedback, it’s time to organize the information you’ve collected. Consider keeping track of your plan in PowerPoint. For example, slide 1 should outline the career goals you identified in your self-reflection. Slide 2 should list out the skills you already have and the ones you would need to achieve your ultimate career goals. Slide 3 should highlight the development activities you plan to pursue over the next five years to help you achieve your goals. And slide 4 should present all of the possible obstacles that might prevent you from achieving your goal and how to address those challenges.
• Iterate. Unlike year-long goal setting, the process of creating a five-year plan is never complete. One way to ensure you’re keeping your plan updated is to set a quarterly calendar reminder. This will help you address any new developments in your life or career and make changes where necessary.

“Where do you see yourself in five years?”

• MM Mary McNevin, Ed. D. is an executive coach, talent advisor, and former CLO and talent executive. She is a growth-oriented talent management executive with 20+ years of experience in learning, talent management, succession planning, and strategy development. Dr. McNevin earned her doctorate (EdD) from the University of Pennsylvania through an interdisciplinary program between the Graduate School of Education and the Wharton School of Business. Her dissertation focused on Executive Coaching in the C-suite. Dr. McNevin also holds an MBA from the University of Wisconsin – Madison and an MS in Education from the University of Pennsylvania.

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Free 5-year plan template to organize the planning process

As a business leader, you know the decisions you make today can shape the future of the company. If you want to control that trajectory, a 5-year plan template can be a useful tool. The right template helps you organize ideas, analyze data, and prioritize the goals you want to achieve — that way, you can create a framework that informs strategic decisions and guides your company toward its ultimate growth goals.

In this article, we’ll explore the parts of a 5-year plan template and discuss how to use it in your business. Then, we’ll dive into the ways you can integrate a 5-year plan into the monday.com Work OS to create a more efficient and powerful workflow.

Get the template

What is a 5-year plan template?

A 5-year plan template is a model document that helps you map out company goals and strategies for the next 5 years. Many templates contain a variety of common sections that you can edit to reflect the goals and needs of your business:

• Executive summary: Top-level overview of your objectives and strategies
• Business description:  Mission statement, description of your products and services, and an introduction to your management or leadership team
• Market analysis: Data about your industry and target audience, trends, opportunities, and competitors
• Financial information: Historical revenue, expense data, and financial projections
• Plans and objectives: Goes into detail about your short and long-term goals and sets company priorities, discusses the goals you want to achieve, and explains the strategies and methods you’ll use

The right structure for your 5-year plan template depends on your company’s specific goals. If you’re going after investors, for example, a traditional structure can help you meet expectations. If the plan is mostly for internal use, you can be more flexible and still reap the benefits of the template.

Why use a 5-year plan template?

A 5-year business plan provides a structure to help you think strategically about your company’s plans for the next few years. Use the preexisting headers to guide your discussions and spark new ideas; you can also add new sections to tailor the content to your business. When it’s time to write, the template helps you organize ideas and format them into a usable document that can provide a slew of benefits for your business.

Guide business decisions

A 5-year plan clarifies your company’s priorities, creating a set of strategic objectives that serves as a reference point when it’s time to make decisions or evaluate opportunities. If your priority is to build brand awareness among Gen Z customers, for example, you might jump at the chance to establish a presence on the hottest new social media platform. If you’re laser-focused on building the best management team in the industry, however, it would be easy to see that your resources are better spent elsewhere.

In addition to serving as a guidepost for major strategic initiatives, your 5-year plan can inform business decisions of all sizes. Look to it when you’re:

• Making a budget
• Assessing the organizational structure
• Designing a marketing plan
• Adding or removing products and services
• Writing business policies
• Setting up a technology infrastructure

Enable strategic hiring and training

A solid 5-year plan makes it easier to anticipate upcoming personnel needs, so you can make strategic hiring decisions. If you have limited resources, the plan can also help you figure out which tasks require a full-time employee and which ones you can outsource.

Are you thinking about training your existing employees? To determine the courses and topics with the highest ROI, compare the skills and abilities of your workforce against the practical needs outlined in the 5-year plan. This process highlights skill gaps and exposes the most urgent training opportunities.

Stay focused on goals

A lot can happen in 5 years — managers come and go, market conditions shift, and unexpected events can arise out of nowhere. In the midst of all that change, a well-written 5-year plan is a constant. It keeps your team focused on the same long-term goals, regardless of turnover. This unified approach can ensure that you’re always making progress in the right direction.

Prepare for challenges

Writing a 5-year plan requires you to analyze the business and the industry. As you dig into available data, you gain a deeper understanding of your customers, operations, competitors, and the market itself. With that knowledge, you’re better positioned to anticipate potential challenges and roadblocks. Awareness is everything; it helps you spot early warning signs, so you can start preparing the company to adjust short-term goals and adapt quickly.

Build confidence among investors

If you’re thinking about seeking investments to fund business expansion, a 5-year plan is essential. A thorough, well-written document reassures investors that you’ve done your due diligence and demonstrates that your company is positioned to make a profit. A template can help you examine and analyze each part of the business systematically to ensure the plan addresses investors’ top concerns.

When you’re ready to grow, a professional 5-year plan template can help you woo investors.

What are some examples of 5-year plan templates?

No two companies have identical 5-year plans; the template that works best for your organization depends on the age of the business, the nature of your goal, and how you’re planning to utilize the plan.

Startup plan

A 5-year plan creates a roadmap to follow as you establish a startup, build an audience, and stake out a place in the industry. This type of template often contains lengthy sections about marketing, sales, and product or service development; it also tends to be heavy on research and analysis.

Growth and expansion plan

When your company has been in business for a few years, you might start to think about expanding. A 5-year plan helps you approach growth strategically; it’s a good way to identify the best opportunities and find ways to minimize risk. These plans often analyze competitors and discuss the costs and benefits of different growth options.

One-page plan

Whether you’re growing a startup or expanding an established business, a traditional 5-year plan contains a high level of detail. The one-page business plan  version provides a quick overview — it highlights the most important points of each section. Instead of explaining your market research and explaining how they inform each goal, for example, you could note the key findings and include a prioritized list of goals.

5-year plan template on monday.com

Whether you’re creating a plan for an arts nonprofit or an engineering firm, the 5-Year Plan Template on monday.com can help you navigate the process. A color-coded header system enables you to organize and identify top-level sections. Within each one, you can add descriptions and build out a list of objectives, goals, manager profiles, financial projections, and other details.

The monday.com template adds an extra level of detail and functionality to your 5-year plan. For each item in a section, you can add a variety of columns that track the status of a project, identify relevant team members, designate a timeline, or set a budget. You can even add a column that links critical files to ensure easy access for all of your stakeholders. When you start working toward the goals in your plan, monday.com offers different Board Views , project management tools, and automations to streamline your workflow. Your template also integrates seamlessly with Work OS, an open platform that enables you to create and customize the tools you need to monitor and run your business.

A 5-year plan is just one of the documents you need to map out and execute a long-term business strategy. The template library at monday.com includes a variety of options to help manage your company’s growth and development.

Related templates on monday.com

We got a ton of really great task management templates, here are some of the best ones.

Marketing plan

If marketing plays a role in your 5-year plan, consider integrating the Marketing Plan Template  into your strategic planning sessions. With sections for different projects and columns that enable you to assign tasks and monitor progress, it can also serve as a project management tool.

Recruitment process

Manage the hiring goals in your 5-year plan with the help of the Recruitment Process Template . It tracks each applicant through the different stages of the process and enables you to track referral sources to inform your job-posting strategy. Status reports for interviews and hiring decisions ensure efficient communication between departments.

Frequently asked questions

What is a 5-year plan.

A 5-year plan is a document that outlines your company’s goals and strategies for the upcoming years. It also provides information to support the plan, such as a market analysis and financial projections.

What should I include in a 5-year plan?

When you’re writing a 5-year plan, include an executive summary, a description of the business, and an analysis of the market, company finances , competitors, and customers. Follow that up with a section that lays out the goals, objectives, and strategies your company will pursue over the next 5 years.

What are 5-year goals examples?

Examples of 5-year goals might include developing new products, expanding to a new location, or reaching new audience segments. You might also set internal goals, such as improving the company culture or building the most talented workforce in the industry.

Using the 5-year plan template for sustainable growth

As you navigate the strategic-planning process, a 5-year plan template can help organize your ideas and set thoughtful, research-backed goals. You’ll emerge with a document that guides business decisions and unites employees around a common purpose. With monday.com, you can incorporate the 5-year plan template into your Work OS to manage projects, set smaller goals, and track progress toward your high-level objectives.

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Writing a 5-Year Plan: Best Tips & Examples to Get You Started

Last Updated: May 28, 2024 Fact Checked

Creating a 5-Year Plan

What is a 5-year plan, benefits of a 5-year plan, sample 5-year plans, expert q&a.

This article was co-authored by Shannon O'Brien, MA, EdM and by wikiHow staff writer, Jennifer Mueller, JD . Shannon O'Brien is the Founder and Principal Advisor of Whole U. (a career and life strategy consultancy based in Boston, MA). Through advising, workshops and e-learning Whole U. empowers people to pursue their life's work and live a balanced, purposeful life. Shannon has been ranked as the #1 Career Coach and #1 Life Coach in Boston, MA by Yelp reviewers. She has been featured on Boston.com, Boldfacers, and the UR Business Network. She received a Master's of Technology, Innovation, & Education from Harvard University. There are 10 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 793,686 times.

If you have ideas for things you want to accomplish in your life, a 5-year plan can help you get to where you want to go. A 5-year plan allows you to plot out specific, concrete steps that will help you create the life you envision—but how do you get started? We talked to life and career coach Shannon O'Brien for tips on how you can get your life on track with a 5-year plan.

Writing an Achievable 5-Year Plan

• Visualize yourself in 5 years. Note the changes that need to happen to get you there.
• Find your "why"—the reason you want to accomplish these goals.
• Learn what resources and knowledge you need to accomplish your goals.
• Create specific, measurable short-term goals to work toward your larger goals.

• Think about improvements you might like to see in areas like your health, relationships, career, family, community, religion or spirituality, or hobbies and recreation.
• For example, if you see yourself as a physically fit person running in a marathon, you might design a health-focused 5-year plan with the goal of getting in shape and starting a regular running training program.
• If you're working on a career-focused 5-year plan, you might create a fictional résumé for yourself in 5 years. This helps make the goals you set along the path to success more concrete. Just don't submit your fictional résumé for a job opening! [2] X Research source

• HARD goals are things that you can't imagine life without. If you didn't achieve these things, you would feel as though something was missing in your life. [4] X Research source

• For example, if you want to become more physically fit , your first answer might be so that you feel better about your body. But if you keep digging, you might find that what you're really concerned about is being around and being healthy for your family. Your family is your core value.

• For example, if you have a 5-year goal of running in a marathon, running a 5K wouldn't be a suitable goal for Year 1. There are many Couch-to-5K programs that can be completed in 30 days, so that goal wouldn't be challenging enough.

• For example, if your 5-year goal is to run a marathon, your short-term goals would likely involve running shorter distances, or running a shorter distance at or under a specific time.
• Choose goals that are based on your performance, not on the outcome. These are more specific and measurable. For example, rather than setting a goal of being fluent in a language, you might set a goal to learn 10 new words every day. [11] X Research source

• For example, if you have a goal related to physical fitness, you might need to buy a gym membership or hire a personal trainer.
• Some goals might require you to learn things. For example, if one of your goals is to teach English in Venezuela, you might need to learn Spanish first.

• You might hang a copy of your 5-year plan in your bathroom so you can reflect on it while you're getting ready in the morning, or near your desk so you'll see it while you're working.
• Don't be shy about your 5-year plan—share it with friends and colleagues who can cheer you on, help motivate you to achieve your goals, and hold you accountable.

• For example, what if your 5-year plan was to run a marathon, but you're running half-marathons with ease after 1 year of training? It's not going to take you 5 years to get ready for the marathon, so you might revise it to a 2- or 3-year goal.
• Sometimes you'll also want to revise your plan due to a change in circumstances beyond your control. For example, you'd likely scrap your 5-year plan to pay off your student loans if the federal government announced all student loans were being forgiven.

• The most important thing to remember about a 5-year plan is that it's never set in stone. A lot can happen in 5 years, so it could be that everything in your plan will change.
• The point of the plan is to show a way that you can achieve your goal, even if it ends up not being the way you ultimately get there.
• Any 5-year plan tends to center around your goals, but goals and plans are two very different things. Your goals are what you want to achieve while your plan is like a roadmap that tells you how you're going to get there. [16] X Research source

• Your plan's flexibility also helps motivate you because you aren't as worried about being derailed if you hit a snag. Because you have the big picture in mind, you know you can work through any challenges that come your way.

• If your plan includes a goal that other people are involved in, the plan also gives those people clarity on what they need to do to achieve the goal collectively.
• You don't have to wonder if the next steps you're taking are leading in the right direction because you've already plotted the whole thing out.
• A clear path also enables you to see how to quickly regroup and get headed toward reaching your goal again if you become sidetracked.

• The plan also allows you to see the whole path clearly so you can understand how each small step that you make is gradually getting you closer to achieving your goal.

• For example, if you have a 5-year plan to become partner of your firm, you might take on projects that set you apart from your colleagues or actively pursue promotions. This gives you more control than if you just waited for the higher-ups to notice you.

• When you're plotting out your 5-year plan, you'll naturally think about stumbling blocks that might arise. Then, you can figure out what you'll do to get around them if they do come up.
• With a 5-year plan, you'll feel like you're on top of things because you have all of the details mapped out. Taking care of the details like this allows you to see the big picture and celebrate all the small accomplishments that eventually lead to major success.

You Might Also Like

• ↑ https://students.carleton.ca/log/five-year-plan/
• ↑ https://capd.mit.edu/resources/creating-your-five-year-plan/
• ↑ https://public.summaries.com/files/samples/hard-goals.pdf
• ↑ Shannon O'Brien, MA, EdM. Life & Career Coach. Expert Interview. 24 September 2021.
• ↑ https://www.berkeleywellbeing.com/personal-goals.html
• ↑ https://www.mindtools.com/a5ykiuq/personal-goal-setting
• ↑ https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/the-cross-examined-life/202401/learn-first-plan-later-drafting-a-useful-five-year-plan
• ↑ https://www.berkeleywellbeing.com/my-10-year-plan.html
• ↑ https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2010-04488-003
• ↑ https://www.mindtools.com/blog/whats-the-point-of-business-plannin-benefits-of-a-5-year-business-plan/

About This Article

To write a five year plan, come up with some goals that are as specific as possible, which will make them easier to track. For example, instead of saying "I want to be making more money," you could say "I want my salary to increase by 15 percent." Once you've made a list of goals, write out a plan for achieving each one. Also, break your goals up into a series of short-term goals so that you feel like you're accomplishing things along the way. For help choosing goals and working toward achieving them, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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More From Forbes

Small business owners: questions you should ask yourself at 5 different stages of growth.

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Dominik Szot, executive coach focused on leaders' legacy, servant leader, global entrepreneur, founder/CEO of MIA , agile management mentor.

"The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled." — Plutarch

As a first-time founder, I relied on the support of business mentors, executive coaches and financial consultants. However, I could have avoided many mistakes by using the "kindling" Plutarch mentions.

When I founded MIA, which I still lead, in 1999, I didn't know how to develop it or chart its growth. Today, 25 years later, as I prepare for succession, I'd like to share my knowledge, drawn from my global experience as an entrepreneur with 14 companies and brands that I founded in Europe and Asia.

Using the HBR "Five Stages of Small-Business Growth" model as a framework, here are my top tips on what to look out for in growing a small company (up to 500 people).

Will Beyoncé Perform At DNC Tonight? Here’s What We Know As Rumors Swirl.

Apple iphone 16, iphone 16 pro release date claimed in controversial new report, today’s nyt mini crossword clues and answers for thursday, august 22, stage i: existence.

The essence of this stage of business development is acquiring enough customers to make the business profitable. At this stage, the owner takes a central role, overseeing all activities and providing the necessary energy and capital.

Here are three questions you should ask yourself at this stage:

• How can we get enough customers?

• How can we expand from our current customer base to reach a much broader sales base, and will this require a change in production processes?

• When will we have enough money to cover the next significant funding requirement?

My tip: Establish a relationship with an experienced mentor with knowledge in a similar business area.

Stage II: Survival

At this stage, as an owner, you should focus on managing cash flow, optimizing operations and building strong customer relationships. It is also crucial to plan and develop the team so the business can achieve financial stability and growth opportunities.

Riddles for the owner to solve:

• How can we ensure sufficient cash flow to break even and cover the replenishment of our capital assets?

• What strategies can we implement to build and maintain strong relationships with our customers and optimize our operations?

• How prepared am I to adapt to market changes, avoid over-control and make timely investment decisions to maintain long-term success?

My tip: Hire a business coach to help you develop managerial and operational skills.

Stage III: Success

This phase means that the company has achieved economic stability and is operating successfully in the market. Now the owner must decide which of the following two models to choose for continued operation:

A: Success Through Withdrawal

The owner gradually distances themself from the company by engaging in other projects or hobbies, delegating management responsibilities to functional managers.

B: Success Through Growth

The owner consolidates the business and organizes resources for growth. This involves greater risk as it commits the company's resources to growth.

The owner’s key questions at this stage are:

• Do I want to focus on growing the company further or on stabilizing and maintaining profitability so that I can gradually withdraw from day-to-day management?

• If you choose Model A: What else do I need to do to ensure that my company's resources and management are sufficient without my day-to-day involvement?

• If you choose Model B: What are the biggest risks associated with the continued growth of the business, and am I prepared to take them on with my current resources and creditworthiness?

My tip: Hire advisors to get expert advice on scaling and coaching on transition management and leadership dynamics.

Stage IV: Take Off

This is the intensive growth phase of the company, where the key challenges are the pace and financing of development. You must now effectively delegate responsibility to others, which requires monitoring their performance and accepting a certain level of mistakes.

Owners should ask themselves:

• What financial resources does my company have, and how long am I willing to tolerate a high debt-to-equity ratio to finance rapid growth?

• What is my company's culture, and how do I delegate responsibility and monitor performance in light of its growth?

• How do I develop my key leaders to cope with the increasing complexity of business development, and how do I develop management systems to support this growth?

My tip: Hire a financial advisor and an executive coach to help build the right company culture.

Stage V: Resource Maturity

At this stage, the organization has reached a significant level of development, is stable and has the human and financial resources to engage in detailed operational and strategic planning.

• How can I effectively consolidate and control financial returns while maintaining flexibility and entrepreneurial spirit (innovation, resilience and adaptation) in the company?

• What does our management still need for further growth and to optimize resources and other efficiencies?

• Are our budgeting, strategic planning and management systems prepared for long-term goals in the spirit of agile management and entrepreneurship?

My tip: Hire a consultant to help you build a program of continuous and sustainable growth in your business.

Final Thoughts

If you manage the financial and management challenges appropriately for each stage of your company's development, your organization can become a large enterprise. The business can also be sold at a profit if you understand its limitations early on and do not want to grow it further.

In running a business, crises are regularly encountered in addition to successes. Knowing how to solve them is one thing, and the art of not causing them is another. This is why the world's best leaders reach out to a variety of advisors, mentors and coaches at every stage of their company's development. Because, as Daniel Kahneman says in his book Thinking, Fast And Slow : "Expertise is not a single skill; it is a collection of skills, and the same professional may be highly expert in some of the tasks in her domain while remaining a novice in others."

Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?

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10 Sample Answers to “Where Do You See Yourself in 5 Years?”

Ever wondered how to ace the ‘Where do you see yourself in 5 years?’ question in job interviews?

At MatchBuilt, we’ve seen over 70% of employers ask this, making it a crucial pivot point for your career narrative. It’s not just about ambition; it’s a litmus test for your alignment with the company’s vision.

In this post, we’ll unlock the secrets behind this question, drawing on insights from top industry recruiters. Expect to find expertly crafted sample answers tailored to various career paths, equipping you with the right tools to articulate your future goals in sync with potential employers. Let’s dive in and transform your interview responses into compelling career stories.

Why Employers Ask This Question and What They Are Looking For

Unraveling the intent behind the classic interview question, ‘Where do you see yourself in 5 years?’, reveals much about an employer’s priorities. It’s not just a query; it’s a strategic probe into your career ambitions and fit with the company’s future.

Here, employers are gauging your long-term vision, seeking signs of ambition, motivation, and dedication to career growth.

A well-crafted answer showcasing your alignment with the company’s values and objectives isn’t just informative—it’s a testament to your commitment and potential growth within the organization. Let’s dive into how a strategic response can significantly impact your career trajectory.

How To Answer ‘Where Do You See Yourself in 5 Years?’

Now that we grasp the reasons behind the question, “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” and what employers are seeking in your response, let’s delve into crafting a compelling answer. Follow these clear and direct steps to excel in your response:

• Be Honest and Realistic: When answering this question, be honest and realistic about your career goals and aspirations . Avoid being vague or unrealistic, as this can give the impression that you haven’t thought much about your future plans.
• Show Your Ambition: Employers seek ambitious and motivated candidates to grow within the company. Show your ambition by sharing your long-term career goals and how they align with the company’s mission and values.
• Highlight Your Skills: Take the opportunity to showcase your skills and how you plan to develop them further. This demonstrates your commitment to your career growth and potential value to the company.
• Be Flexible: While having a clear vision for your future is important, being flexible and adaptable is also essential. Show that you are open to new opportunities and challenges within the company and are willing to adjust your plans if necessary.

When answering this question, avoiding being vague or unrealistic is essential. For example, saying that you see yourself as the company’s CEO within five years may be unrealistic and may not align with the company’s needs. Instead, focus on realistic and achievable goals that demonstrate your ambition and commitment to your career growth within the company.

By following these simple steps, you can provide a thoughtful and strategic answer that impresses your interviewer and showcases your potential as a candidate.

Avoid Common Mistakes When Discussing Your 5-Year Vision

When answering the question, “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” it’s important to avoid common mistakes that could send red flags to the hiring manager and hinder your chances of landing your dream job. Here are some tips on how to avoid these mistakes:

• Don’t be too vague: Avoid giving generic or unclear answers that don’t align with your career aspirations. For example, saying that you see yourself “growing with the company” may not demonstrate enough ambition or a clear plan for your long-term career goals.
• Don’t be too unrealistic: While showcasing your ambition and career growth aspirations is important, keeping them realistic is equally important. Saying that you want to be the company’s CEO within five years while starting at an entry-level position may come across as unrealistic.
• Don’t be too short-sighted: Employers are looking for candidates with a long-term vision for their career growth, not just short-term goals. Ensure your answer includes how you plan to develop your skills and progress in your career beyond the five-year mark.
• Don’t be too focused on the specific position: While showing enthusiasm for the role you’re interviewing for is excellent, showcasing your broader career goals and aspirations is vital. Don’t limit yourself to just one specific position within the company.
• Don’t give the same example answer as everyone else: Employers have repeatedly heard the same “example answers” to this common job interview question. It’s important to stand out by providing a unique and personalized response that showcases your strengths and aspirations.

By avoiding these common mistakes, you can correctly answer the question “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” and increase your chances of receiving a job offer. It’s a great way to show your ambition and commitment to long-term career growth while demonstrating that you are a good fit for the company.

Now that you’ve learned what to avoid when answering ‘Where do you see yourself in 5 years?’, let’s take it a step further. Below is a special video to visually guide you through the nuances of crafting an impactful answer. This video will illustrate, with real examples, how to articulate your 5-year vision effectively, ensuring you stand out in your interview. Get ready to transform your answer from good to exceptional, and confidently express your career aspirations.

10 Example Answers to “Where Do You See Yourself in 5 Years?”

Dive into the heart of your next interview with our curated selection of ten sample answers to the pivotal question, ‘Where do you see yourself in 5 years?’ This section is crafted to arm you with strategies that not only answer the question but also align your ambitions with the company’s vision.

From aspiring leaders to technical experts, each example is tailored to showcase different career paths and goals. Let’s enhance your interview preparation and ensure you leave a memorable impression, well-equipped to articulate your future plans with confidence.

Sample Answer 1: Career Growth

In five years, I see myself as an integral part of the company’s vision, contributing to its growth and success. As the company expands into new markets and adopts new technologies, I would love to take on more responsibilities and advance within my role . To achieve this, I plan to proactively seek out professional development opportunities and mentorship from senior team members. I also aim to leverage my skills and experience to support the company’s goals and work collaboratively with my colleagues towards achieving shared objectives.

The response reflects the candidate’s eagerness to advance their company career and unwavering dedication to growth. It exhibits a thorough understanding of the company’s objectives and reveals the candidate’s determination to succeed through proactivity. By prioritizing their professional progression and seeking opportunities to hone their skills, the candidate aligns with the qualities that employers look for in a driven and committed candidate.

Sample Answer 2: Leadership Development

In the next five years, I envision myself growing within the company by taking on new challenges and expanding my skill set. As I understand from my research, the company is expanding its market share and introducing new products to its portfolio. I would like to be a part of this growth and contribute to the success of the company by taking on leadership roles in these new projects. To achieve this, I plan to actively seek out opportunities to learn and develop my skills, take on new responsibilities, and work closely with senior leaders to gain mentorship and guidance. I believe that by growing my leadership skills and contributing to the company’s vision, I can make a meaningful impact and help drive the company’s success in the future.

This answer demonstrates the candidate’s ambition and commitment to developing their leadership skills, a highly valued trait by employers. It also shows that the candidate has a clear plan for achieving their goals and is willing to take proactive steps to develop their skills.

Sample Answer 3: Cross-Functional Experience

In the next five years, I see myself growing within the company by taking on new challenges and expanding my skillset. I am impressed with the company’s vision for innovation and growth, and I would love to be a part of that journey. Specifically, I am interested in learning more about [specific department or project] and how I can contribute to its success. I plan to seek out opportunities to collaborate with those teams and gain a deeper understanding of their operations. By doing so, I believe I can bring added value to the company and achieve my own professional goals.

This response highlights the candidate’s eagerness to enhance their knowledge and expertise beyond their current position, showcasing a valuable attribute for any employee. Moreover, it indicates that the candidate is proactive in their approach and actively seeks out avenues for progress and advancement within the organization.

Sample Answer 4: Contribution to Company Goals

I see myself growing with the company and taking on new challenges over the next five years. I am excited about the company’s focus on expanding into new markets and developing innovative products, and I would love to be a part of that vision. Specifically, I hope to take on leadership roles within my department and contribute to the company’s success through my skills and expertise. I plan to continually improve myself by seeking out opportunities for training and development and staying up-to-date with industry trends. Ultimately, my goal is to make a significant impact on the company’s growth and success while also advancing my own career.

This answer demonstrates the candidate’s commitment to the company’s goals and values, a highly valued trait by employers. It also shows that the candidate has a clear plan for achieving their goals and is willing to seek feedback and mentorship to ensure their success.

Sample Answer 5: Technical Expertise

In the next five years, I see myself growing within the company and becoming an integral part of its future. I am excited about the company’s vision to expand its digital offerings, and I would love to be a part of that growth. Specifically, I am passionate about developing my technical expertise and becoming a subject matter expert within my field. To achieve this goal, I plan to attend technical training or workshops, seek mentorship or guidance from technical experts within the company, and actively seek out challenging technical projects. My objective is to become a valuable resource for the company and a go-to person for technical questions or projects that contribute to the company’s growth and success.

The candidate’s response indicates a strong drive to improve their technical abilities , reflecting a desirable quality sought by employers. Additionally, the candidate’s clear and well-thought-out plan for skill development showcases their dedication to achieving their objectives and their proactive approach toward seeking opportunities for growth and advancement.

Sample Answer 6: Leadership and Management

I see myself taking on a leadership role within the company over the next five years and managing a team. I have been actively developing my leadership skills, and I believe that I will be ready to take on this responsibility in five years. I plan to continue to grow my skills by taking leadership courses and working closely with my current manager to learn as much as possible.

This answer demonstrates that the candidate has ambition and is committed to growing their skills within the company. It also shows that they have a specific career path in mind and are actively working towards achieving their goals.

Sample Answer 7: Industry Expertise

In five years, I see myself as a vital member of the team, contributing to the company’s growth and success. As I understand the company’s vision, it aims to expand into new markets and develop innovative products to stay ahead of the competition. I am excited about the opportunity to grow alongside the company and be part of this vision. I plan to take on challenging projects, seek out learning opportunities, and continuously improve my skills to contribute to the company’s progress. Additionally, I look forward to mentoring new team members and sharing my knowledge and expertise to contribute to the team’s overall success.

The candidate’s response shows a strong commitment to staying current with the latest industry trends and a drive to enhance their expertise. Moreover, it highlights their proactive attitude and willingness to take on new challenges to advance their objectives.

Sample Answer 8: Making an Impact

In five years, I envision myself as a key player in the company’s growth and success. As the company expands into new markets and takes on more complex projects, I would like to take on a leadership role in these endeavors. I am excited about the company’s focus on innovation and sustainability, and I hope to contribute to these initiatives by developing new strategies and implementing best practices. By seeking out mentorship opportunities and continuously improving my skills, I am confident that I can help the company achieve its long-term goals.

This answer shows that the candidate is focused on making a meaningful impact within the company and is committed to finding ways to contribute to the team’s success. It also demonstrates that they are eager to develop their skills and become a more valuable team member.

Sample Answer 9: Entrepreneurship

In five years, I see myself starting my own business within the industry. I plan to continue learning as much as possible while working at this company and develop a network of industry professionals who can support me when the time comes. I believe that my experience working here will be invaluable when starting my own business.

This answer demonstrates that the candidate is ambitious and has a long-term career plan in mind. It also shows they are committed to developing their skills and network while working at the company. They see their experience there as an asset to their future entrepreneurial endeavors.

Sample Answer 10: Company Loyalty

In five years, I see myself still working at this company and contributing to its growth and success. I plan to continue developing my skills and taking on new challenges as they arise. I believe that this company is the best place for me to achieve my career goals, and I am committed to its success.

The candidate’s response exemplifies their loyalty to the company and their intention to stay for the long haul. It also highlights their unwavering commitment to improving their skills and tackling fresh challenges to propel the company’s growth and prosperity further.

Actionable Tips for the 5-Year Vision Interview Question

When responding to the question, “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” in an interview, it’s beneficial to focus on one or two key areas that align closely with your career aspirations and the company’s objectives. This section offers actionable tips derived from various focus areas to help you articulate a clear and strategic vision. Tailoring your response by combining aspects of these tips can make your answer more impactful and aligned with your individual goals.

Enhance your understanding of ‘Where do you see yourself in 5 years?’ another video guide. This visual complements the actionable tips provided, offering a dynamic way to understand how to effectively incorporate these strategies into your answer. The video will bring these tips to life, demonstrating how to blend your career aspirations with the company’s goals in a compelling and personalized way. Get ready to refine your response and make a memorable impact in your next interview.

More Frequently Asked Interview Questions

Preparing for an interview can be nerve-wracking, especially when unsure of what to expect. While every interview differs, hiring managers tend to ask several common questions. Knowing how to answer these questions can help you feel more confident and prepared for your interview. This section will review some of the most common interview questions, tips, and example answers to help you nail your next interview.

The best answer to "What is your long-term goal?" will vary depending on the individual and the specific job opportunity. However, a good answer should demonstrate ambition, a clear vision for the future, and alignment with the company's values and goals. Here is an example of a strong answer: "My long-term goal is to continue to grow and develop in my career while making meaningful contributions to the company. Specifically, I aim to take on increasingly challenging roles and responsibilities that allow me to leverage my skills and experience while also expanding my knowledge and expertise. I see myself as a valuable member of the team, working collaboratively with my colleagues to drive the company's success and achieve our shared goals."

One example answer to the question "Where do you see yourself in 10 years?" could be: "In 10 years, I see myself in a leadership role within the company, working closely with the executive team to drive business strategy and innovation. I hope to have developed a strong team of professionals who share my vision and commitment to excellence. Additionally, I plan to have pursued further education and training to expand my skills and knowledge, ultimately positioning myself as an expert in my field." This answer demonstrates ambition, strategic thinking, and a long-term commitment to the company's success. It also shows a willingness to invest in personal and professional growth, which is highly valued by employers. It's important to note that this answer should be tailored to the specific position and company you are interviewing for, showcasing how your long-term goals align with their needs and objectives.

One example answer to the question "What can you bring to the company?" could be: "One of my strengths is my ability to problem-solve and think creatively. In my previous job, I identified a bottleneck in the production process and developed a new strategy that increased efficiency by 30%. I believe this kind of innovative thinking can be applied to any company, and I am excited to bring it to your team." The answer provided showcases a clear understanding of the company's needs and a strong alignment with them. The candidate has also demonstrated how their skills and experience can benefit the company by providing a specific example.

A great example answer to "How do you handle stress and pressure?" would be: "I handle stress and pressure by prioritizing my tasks and breaking them down into smaller, more manageable tasks. I also make sure to take breaks and step away from my work when necessary to clear my mind and refocus. In my previous job, I had a deadline for a project, and there was a lot of pressure to finish it on time. I took the initiative to organize a meeting with my team to discuss our progress and delegate tasks effectively, which helped us meet our deadline without compromising the quality of our work." This answer demonstrates a proactive approach to stress and pressure, emphasizing problem-solving skills, time management, and teamwork. The candidate shows the ability to take charge of the situation and manage their workload effectively while maintaining high quality in their work. Providing a specific example also adds credibility to the candidate's answer, showing their ability to handle stressful situations in the past.

A great way to answer the question, "What can you contribute to the team?" is to provide specific examples of your skills, experiences, and accomplishments related to the job and the team's needs. "I believe my strong communication and collaboration skills, as well as my ability to think creatively and solve problems, would make a valuable contribution to the team. In my previous job, I collaborated with a team of designers and developers to create a new website for our client. My ability to communicate effectively and work well with others helped us meet our deadlines and deliver a high-quality product. I also came up with a creative solution to a technical problem that saved the project time and money. I am confident that I can bring these skills and experiences to this team and contribute to its success." This answer shows that the candidate has specific skills and experiences that are relevant to the job and the team's needs. The example also demonstrates the candidate's ability to work well with others, think creatively, and solve problems, all of which are valuable traits in a team environment. By providing a concrete example, the candidate shows that they have a track record of contributing to a team's success, which can give the hiring manager confidence in their ability to do the same in the new job.

Moving Up the Ladder: Using the “Where Do You See Yourself in 5 Years?” Question to Your Advantage

Answering the question about where you see yourself in 5 years requires a certain amount of crystal ball-gazing. However, by considering your long-term personal goals and creating a five-year plan, you can position yourself for success over the long haul. Whether you’re aiming for a specific management position or simply looking to build your skills and experience as an entry-level employee, having a clear sense of your ultimate goal is a good idea.

At MatchBuilt executive search, we understand that the coming years may hold many opportunities and challenges for job seekers like you. That’s why we’ve provided ten sample answers to one of the most common interview questions, along with advice on how to craft the best response for your potential employers. By following our tips and tailoring your answer to the specific position you’re seeking, you’ll make a great first impression on new employees and increase your chances of landing the job.

About Mark Matyanowski

As the founder of MatchBuilt, with over 18 years of recruiting and coaching experience and 8+ years in executive roles at a leading Fortune 100 company, I am deeply committed to guiding professionals in their career paths.

Our team at MatchBuilt offers expert support in enhancing resumes, optimizing LinkedIn profiles, and preparing for interviews. Our blog, drawing on our rich experience and industry insights, is a valuable resource for job seekers.

We take pride in successfully guiding job candidates to top-tier company roles while empowering individuals to achieve their career ambitions, irrespective of their background or educational level.

City Council Meeting - August 19, 2024

1. ROLL CALL. 2. APPROVAL OF MINUTES. 2.1. Approval of Minutes. August 5, 2024, City Council Meeting. 3. FINALIZATION AND APPROVAL OF CONSENT AGENDAS. CITIZENS WISHING TO SPEAK TO OR REMOVE ITEMS FROM THE CONSENT AGENDAS MUST DO SO AT THIS TIME. 4. CEREMONIAL MATTERS. 5. CITY MANAGER REPORT, POLICE CHIEF REPORT, AND RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS RAISED AT THE PREVIOUS CITY COUNCIL MEETING. 6. SECOND READING AND FINAL PASSAGE. Citizens Have Spoken. May Be Voted On. 6.1. Council Bill 2024-158 (McGull) A general ordinance amending the Springfield Land Development Code, Section 36-306, ‘Official zoning map and rules for interpretation,’ by rezoning approximately 5 acres of property generally located at 3110 East Cherry Street from GR, General Retail, with Conditional Overlay District 158, to GR, General Retail, with Conditional Overlay District No. 255; and adopting an updated Official Zoning Map. (By: B&T Commercial Properties LLC; 3110 East Cherry Street; Z-19-2024 w/ COD 255.) 6.2. Council Bill 2024-159 (Simpson) A general ordinance amending the Springfield Land Development Code, Section 36-306, ‘Official zoning map and rules for interpretation,’ by rezoning approximately 0.73 acres of property generally located at 2456 East Sunshine Street from Planned Development 136, to GR, General Retail District; establishing Conditional Overlay District No. 254; and adopting an updated Official Zoning Map. (By: Thomas Edward Gregorski; 2456 East Sunshine Street; Z-18-2024 w/ Conditional Overlay District No. 254.) 6.3. Council Bill 2024-160 (Jenson) A general ordinance amending the Springfield Land Development Code, Section 36-306, ‘Official zoning map and rules for interpretation,’ by rezoning approximately 5.4 acres of property generally located at 817 West El Camino Alto Drive from R-LD, Low-Density Multi-Family Residential District, with Conditional Overlay District 214, to O-1, Office District; establishing Conditional Overlay District No. 253; and adopting an updated Official Zoning Map. (By: Ridge HZ55, LLC; 817 West El Camino Alto Drive; Z-17-2024 with Conditional Overlay District No. 253.) 6.4. Council Bill 2024-161 (Jenson) A general ordinance amending the Official Map of the City of Springfield, Missouri, adopted pursuant to General Ordinance 1478, by changing the street name of the 1700-2000 block of South McCurry Street to South McCurry Avenue. 6.5. Council Bill 2024-165 (Horton, McGull) A special ordinance amending the Fiscal Year 2024-2025 budget of the Department of Public Works in the amount of $1,350,000 to appropriate 1/4-cent Capital Improvement Sales Tax fund balance reserves for sidewalk improvements and rehabilitation of existing sidewalks. 6.6. Council Bill 2024-166 (Simpson) A special ordinance authorizing the Director of Planning and Development to accept the dedication of public streets and easements to the City of Springfield, Missouri, as shown on the renewal of the Cluster Preliminary Subdivision Plat of Reed Avenue Cottages, generally located at 4423 South Reed Avenue, upon the applicant filing and recording a final plat that substantially conforms to the preliminary plat; and authorizing the City Clerk to sign the final plat upon compliance with all the terms of this Ordinance. 6.7. Council Bill 2024-167 (Hosmer) A special ordinance amending the Fiscal Year 2024-2025 budget of the Springfield-Greene County Park Board by increasing revenues in the amount of $175,000.00. 7. RESOLUTIONS. Citizens May Speak. May Be Voted On. 7.1. Council Bill 2024-169 (Hosmer) A resolution adopting the goals of eliminating traffic-related deaths by 2040 and eliminating traffic-related serious injuries by 2050 as part of a Vision Zero approach to traffic safety. 7.2. Council Bill 2024-170 (Hardinger) A resolution authorizing the City Manager, or designee, to apply for a Safe Streets and Roads for All grant of up to $3,000,000 from the United States Department of Transportation to fund studies for a transportation master plan. 7.3. Council Bill 2024-171 (Lee) A resolution authorizing the City Manager, or designee, to apply for a Charging and Fueling Infrastructure grant of up to $600,000 from the United States Department of Transportation through an application submitted by the Ozarks Transportation Organization to install electric vehicle charging stations. 8. EMERGENCY BILLS. 9. PUBLIC IMPROVEMENTS. 10. GRANTS. 11. AMENDED BILLS. 12. COUNCIL BILLS FOR PUBLIC HEARING. 13. FIRST READING BILLS. Requiring One Reading. Citizens May Speak. May Be Voted On. 13.1. Council Bill 2024-172 (Carroll) A special ordinance to levy and assess a special tax against the lots, blocks, and parcels of ground hereinafter described and to establish rates to pay for the cost of the construction of sanitary sewers in the City of Springfield, Missouri, in Sanitary Sewer District No. 182 of Section No. 16, in the general vicinity of West Bypass and Division Street; providing for inclusion of said district in the City Sewer Financial Assistance Program; authorizing the City Clerk to issue special tax bills and deliver the same to the Director of Finance to be registered in his office in accordance with this Ordinance; and declaring that this Ordinance qualifies for approval in one reading under City Charter Section 10.15. 14. FIRST READING BILLS. Requiring Two Readings. Citizens May Speak. Not Anticipated To Be Voted On. 14.1. Council Bill 2024-173 (Carroll) A special ordinance amending the Fiscal Year 2024-2025 budget to appropriate $461,000 from the Marijuana Sales Tax Fund; and reducing by five the authorized full-time equivalent positions of Police Officer. 15. PETITIONS, REMONSTRANCES AND COMMUNICATIONS. 15.1. James Wilson wishes to address City Council. 15.2. Duane Keys wishes to address City Council. 15.3. Robert Iacob wishes to address City Council. 16. NEW BUSINESS. 17. UNFINISHED BUSINESS. 18. MISCELLANEOUS. 19. CONSENT AGENDA – FIRST READING BILLS. See Item #3. 19.1. Council Bill 2024-174 (Jenson) A special ordinance authoring the City Manager, or designee, to enter into a License Agreement with Missouri State University, for the purpose of allowing the installation and maintenance of a public shuttle shelter onto City right-of-way at 901 East Elm Street. 20. CONSENT AGENDA – ONE READING BILLS. See Item #3. 20.1. Council Bill 2024-175 (Hardinger) A resolution confirming the appointment of Lori Vaccaro and the reappointment of Martin Gugel and Matt Schaefer to the Convention and Entertainment Community Improvement District Board of Directors. 20.2. Council Bill 2024-176 (Hosmer) A resolution acknowledging the reappointment of Travis Shaw to the Springfield Enhanced Enterprise Zone Board as the representative of the affected school districts. 21. CONSENT AGENDA – SECOND READING BILLS. 22. END OF CONSENT AGENDA. 23. ADJOURN.

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