Choose lean or traditional first
You have two choices. A lean startup plan is “typically only one page” and covers only the key elements. A traditional plan goes into detail, “can be dozens of pages long”, and is the kind the SBA says “Lenders and investors commonly request”.
If you are paying for the start yourself, write the lean version first. You will change drips, prices and towns in your first months, and a one page plan is easy to redo on a Sunday night. If you are applying for a loan or taking a partner’s money, write the traditional plan and use the lean one as its outline.
A business plan does not settle who may own an IV business in your state or what your nurses may do. Get those answers from your board of nursing, an attorney and your medical director, then write what they tell you into the plan.
The summary and company description
The summary is the part a lender reads first, and its job, in the SBA’s words, is to say “what your company is and why it will be successful”. For an IV business, that comes down to a few plain facts:
- Mobile, lounge or both, and the towns or ZIP codes you will serve.
- Who gives the infusions, their licenses and bedside experience, and who your medical director is.
- How a visit works, from the booking text to the nurse packing up.
- Why a client would book you over the lounge across town, in one sentence you could also put on your homepage.
Write the company description the way you would explain the business to a friend at dinner. A line like the one below tells a lender more than a mission statement does.
Sample: “We bring IV hydration to homes, hotels and offices across the north side of the metro. A registered nurse handles every visit from start to finish. You book and pay from your phone.”
Your menu, and the claims to leave out
This is where IV plans most often go wrong. The service section asks what you sell and “how it benefits your customers”, and it is tempting to answer with results. A plan is not an ad, but its wording tends to end up on your website, your Google profile and your ads.
The FTC says health claims “require substantiation in the form of competent and reliable scientific evidence”. So describe each service by what happens: the fluids and add ons your medical director approved, which ones need a consult first, how long a visit takes and what it costs.
Describe the benefit as the service itself: no waiting room, and a nurse who comes to the client. Leave words like detox, immunity and recovery out of the plan unless your medical director has approved the exact wording, so they never get copied into your marketing by accident.
A market analysis you can do in an afternoon
You do not need a paid industry report. Most of what a lender wants to know about your market fits in one table you can fill in yourself this week. Start with the question the SBA asks about saturation: “How many similar options are already available to consumers?”
- Saturation. With Google Maps centered on your service area, search the terms listed under these steps. List every business that shows up, whether it is mobile or a lounge, and how many reviews it has.
- Pricing. Write down each competitor’s posted price for its most common drip and its membership, if it shows one. Note who hides prices behind a phone call.
- Demand. Open Google Keyword Planner and set the location to your service area. Google says the tool shows “estimates of the searches they receive and the cost to target them”. Save the monthly estimates and the bid ranges for each search.
- Location. Draw your service area by drive time from where you start your day. Mark the hotels, gyms, offices and event venues inside it.
Keyword Planner needs a Google Ads account with billing information entered before it shows its basic features, so set that up before your research afternoon. Put the competitor list, the prices and the search estimates in a short table. That table is your market analysis.
Marketing and sales: how a stranger becomes a client
Write this section as the path one client takes, from the first time they hear your name to their third visit. That covers what the SBA wants here, which is to “describe how you’ll attract and retain customers” and to show how a sale will actually happen.
- Found. Where they first see you: your Google Business Profile, a search ad, a gym or hotel that refers you, a friend’s post.
- Booked. What they tap, who answers and how fast. Name the booking tool and the person who replies to texts on a busy Saturday.
- Visited. What happens at the door, including intake and any consult your medical director requires.
- Back again. How you ask for a review, how you rebook, and whether you will sell a membership or package.
Put a cost next to each step, and keep two kinds of money apart: the ad budget that goes to Google, and the fees for the website, ad management and hosting. To size each one, see how much to spend on marketing. For the order to build them in, see marketing a new IV business.
Projections and your break-even point
Build your projections from visits: how many a week, at what average price, minus what each visit costs you. A lender plan looks out five years, but for the first year the SBA suggests quarterly or even monthly numbers. The monthly version is the one you will actually open again.
Then find your break-even point. Using the SBA formula, it is fixed costs divided by the sales price per unit minus the variable cost per unit. In IV terms:
- Fixed costs are what you pay each month whether or not you see anyone: insurance, your medical director, software, hosting, your phone and the monthly part of your marketing.
- Price per unit is your average visit price after discounts and membership pricing.
- Variable cost per unit is what one visit uses: the bag, the add ons, supplies, the nurse’s pay for that visit and the drive.
The answer is the number of visits a month you need before the business covers its costs. Put it at the top of your projections. It tells you, and anyone reading the plan, how many bookings your marketing has to bring in.
If you are asking for money
Fill in a funding request only if you are asking for a loan or an investment. Say how much you need and what it is for. The SBA’s advice is to “Give a detailed description of how you’ll use your funds.”
For an IV business, list the start up purchases one line at a time: first stock and supplies, chairs or a vehicle setup, the website and booking system, insurance, and the months of marketing it will take before visits cover the bills. A lender will hold those lines up against your projections, so the marketing months here should match the costs in your marketing section.
Use the plan after you open
Open the plan again after your first full month of visits. Compare the visits you planned with the visits you had, and where each booking came from. If one source is bringing in most of your clients, change the plan to put more behind it, then make the same change in your budget.
Keep the competitor table too. Run the same Maps searches each season and update the prices. New mobile IV businesses open quietly, and the table shows you before your bookings do.
The short version
- Write a one page lean plan first, and a traditional plan when a lender asks
- Describe each drip by what happens, and leave results out
- Count competitors, prices and searches yourself in one afternoon
- Write marketing as the path one client takes, with a cost at each step
- Put your break-even visits a month at the top of the projections