How a Side Hustler Makes 5500 Monthly as a Freelance Business Plan Writer

Lucas: You know how every startup founder and small business owner eventually needs to write a business plan — and most of them absolutely dread it? Luna: Oh, for sure. It's one of those tasks that feels huge and bureaucratic, especially if you're not a writer. Lucas: Exactly. And that's exactly the gap our guest this week identified. Her name is Sarah, and she's a former marketing manager who now makes about fifty-five hundred dollars a month writing business plans for other people. She does it entirely as a side hustle, usually in the evenings and on weekends. Luna: That's a serious number. How long did it take her to get there? Lucas: She started about eighteen months ago, and she says it took her roughly six months to hit that steady five-figure-a-month range. The key was finding a repeatable process and figuring out who actually pays for this service. Luna: Okay, I have to ask — who actually pays for a freelance business plan writer? I feel like most bootstrapped founders would just use a template. Lucas: Great question. Sarah breaks her clients into three buckets. First, there are early-stage startups applying to accelerators or pitching to angel investors. Those plans are usually ten to fifteen pages and need to tell a compelling story. Second, there are small businesses — think coffee shops, boutique fitness studios — that need a plan for a bank loan or SBA financing. Those are more formulaic but have to hit specific underwriting criteria. And third, there are established companies that need a strategic plan for internal alignment or a major partnership. Luna: So it's not just one type of document. She's basically a strategic writer with different templates depending on the audience. Lucas: Exactly. And that's what allows her to charge by the project, not the hour. For a simple one-pager — sometimes called a lean business plan — she charges around five hundred dollars. A mid-range plan for an accelerator application runs about fifteen hundred. And a full-blown thirty-page plan with financial projections can go for three to four thousand. Luna: So if she does two or three of those larger projects a month, she's at her target. How does she find these clients? Lucas: This part is really smart. She doesn't cold pitch. Instead, she positions herself as a resource for business coaches, accountants, and lawyers who already work with entrepreneurs. She sends a one-page PDF to those professionals — basically a sample business plan summary — and says, 'If any of your clients need help turning their idea into a document, I can do it in a week.' That referral pipeline now accounts for about seventy percent of her business. Luna: That's such a clean strategy. It's not competing with the cheap template market; it's partnering with trusted advisors. And the sample itself does the selling. Lucas: Right. And because she comes from marketing, her plans actually read well. She told me most business plans are dry and bullet-point heavy. She focuses on narrative — why the founder, why the market, why now. That's what makes investors and bankers pay attention. Luna: I want to know about the financial side. A business plan usually needs projections. Does she do those herself? Lucas: Good question. She doesn't build complex financial models from scratch. She uses a set of spreadsheet templates she bought for about fifty dollars from a financial modeling site. Then she customizes the assumptions based on what the client tells her. If the client doesn't have numbers, she asks for three key inputs: expected monthly revenue after one year, startup costs, and number of employees. She plugs those into the template and gets a three-year projection. It takes her about two hours. Luna: So she's not a CPA. She's a writer who can use a template. That's actually reassuring — it means someone with strong writing and basic spreadsheet skills could do this. Lucas: Exactly. And she's very upfront with clients about that. She says, 'I'm not your accountant. I will build a reasonable projection based on the numbers you give me. If you need audited financials, hire a CPA.' That honesty builds trust. Luna: I bet it does. One thing I'm curious about — how does she handle revisions? Because a business plan often goes through multiple rounds of feedback. Lucas: She includes two rounds of revisions in her flat fee. Any changes beyond that are billed at seventy-five dollars per hour. She says about half her clients need more than two rounds, so that's a nice incremental revenue stream. But she structures her process to minimize back and forth. She sends a detailed questionnaire first — things like 'Describe your target customer in one sentence,' 'What is your unfair advantage?' — and she won't start writing until the questionnaire is complete. Luna: That's a great gate. It forces the client to think before they ask for changes. And it saves her from having to rewrite because the client didn't know what they wanted. Lucas: Exactly. And here's something interesting — she also offers a 'business plan audit' service for about three hundred dollars. That's where she reviews an existing plan and provides a two-page memo with specific feedback. She says a lot of clients come to her through that service and then upgrade to a full rewrite. Luna: That's a low-commitment entry point. It's smart productization. Lucas: Yeah, and it also builds a portfolio of sample work she can show prospective clients — with permission, of course. She now has about twenty anonymized case studies on her website. Luna: I'm going to guess she doesn't have a big marketing budget either. How does she get traffic? Lucas: She writes one blog post per month on LinkedIn. Not about business plans per se, but about common mistakes she sees. Titles like 'Why Your Executive Summary Buries the Lead' or 'Three Financial Projections That Will Kill Your Pitch.' Those posts get shared by the same business coaches who refer her. She also sends a quarterly email to her referral partners with a short tip — no more than three paragraphs — and a reminder that she's available. Luna: So it's all relationship-based. That makes this feel very sustainable. She's not chasing algorithms. Lucas: Exactly. And I think that's the real lesson here. She identified a pain point that's persistent — every entrepreneur needs a plan at some point — and she positioned herself not as a cheap alternative to doing it yourself, but as a strategic partner who saves you time and helps you get funded. Luna: Speaking of time — how long does a typical project take her? Lucas: She says a lean plan takes about four to six hours of actual work. A full plan with projections takes twelve to fifteen hours spread over a week. She does most of her work between eight and eleven p.m., after her day job as a marketing manager. So it's genuinely a side hustle. Luna: That's a really manageable time commitment for five thousand plus a month. If someone wanted to start this, what would you say the first step is? Lucas: Sarah says the first step is to write a business plan for a real business — even if it's a friend's coffee shop or a family member's landscaping company. Do it for free or for a testimonial. That gives you a sample and a reference. Then reach out to one business coach or accountant in your network and offer to be their go-to writer. That's it. Luna: And that first sample doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to show you can structure a narrative. Lucas: Exactly. And if you're listening and thinking, 'I could do that,' you probably can. It's a writing skill with a repeatable process. And the demand isn't going anywhere. Luna: You know, it occurs to me that conversations like this — where we dig into the actual mechanics of a side hustle — are exactly the kind of thing that makes this show valuable. We don't run ads, we don't sell courses, we just share real numbers and real strategies. Lucas: Yeah, that's intentional. And if these episodes have helped you think about your own side hustle in a new way, or given you a concrete idea to try, that's the whole point. We keep this show ad-free because we want the content to be the only thing that matters. Luna: If you want to support that choice — and help us keep doing episodes like this — the link is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Just a simple way to say thanks if you've gotten value here. Lucas: No pressure at all. We're grateful you listen. Now, back to Sarah's story — she also shared something about pricing psychology that I think is really useful. Luna: Oh, good. Tell me. Lucas: She says the biggest mistake new freelance business plan writers make is underpricing. They charge two hundred dollars for a full plan, which signals low quality. She started at five hundred for a lean plan and increased to a thousand after three months. Her rule of thumb: if you're not losing a few prospects because of your price, you're too cheap. Luna: That's a tough but smart heuristic. It forces you to value your own time. Lucas: Right. And she also offers a money-back guarantee — if the client doesn't get funded or approved, she'll do a free revision. She's only had to honor it twice, and both times the client came back for a different project. So the guarantee builds trust without costing much. Luna: That's a great closing note. So for anyone listening who's a strong writer and wants a side hustle that's strategic, not just busywork — writing business plans might be worth a shot. Lucas: Absolutely. And if you try it, we'd love to hear how it goes. You can find us on the Fexingo Business podcast network. Until next time.