Welcome to another episode of Lone Wolf Unleashed! I’m Mike—your go-to for stripping admin to the bone, giving you more time and less chaos in your one-person business. This week, we’re tackling a game-changer: the “one pager” that could literally save your business—and your sanity.

Get this episode's free download here: https://lonewolfunleashed.com/4p-profile

If you’ve ever struggled to describe your business in a pinch, felt overwhelmed by messy docs scattered everywhere, or just wanted to get all those processes out of your head and into a system that actually frees up your afternoons, this episode is for you. Today, I’ll break down the first step of my 4Ps framework: profiling your business. We’ll get clear on who you serve, what value you deliver, and outline the essential workflows that keep your operation running. I’ll even share a dead-simple template you can grab from my website to map your business on a single page—no corporate jargon, no endless checklists.

Ready to make your solo operation more profitable and less stressful? Grab a coffee, CLICK PLAY and let’s get started on building the clarity and efficiency you deserve.

Mentioned in this episode:

Join the Wolfpack

G'. Day. My name is Mike from Lone Wolf Unleashed, and today I'm going to

walk you through the one pager that could save your business and perhaps your

sanity as well.

Let's kick off by saying that most solo operators can't

explain their business clearly in an emergency or rarely at all.

I was on a call last week with a lady who runs her own

business. She tried to have her business systemized

with another local provider and they didn't deliver something that was

particularly good, which was disappointing to hear. And the biggest problem that she

said to me was, I just don't know where to start. Everything is very

overwhelming. I just can't get it out of my head. I don't

know where to begin with doing this properly.

She was in the middle of doing a contract negotiation for

some sort of software that's quite niche to her area,

and she just didn't know the types of requirements that she would

need to be thinking about as she went into that discussion. Her

documents and everything were all in different places and

not very well organized, and it was chaos.

And I get the feeling that there's a lot of businesses like that out there.

So today I'm going to walk you through the first P of my

4PS framework, and that is profile. We

are going to profile your business. This is the first step to breaking down

the complexity of what your business is. Now, if you're a solo

operator, your business may not be very complex, and that's okay. But this

is a starting point. We're going to get in a helicopter and we're going to

fly over your business and we're going to understand what makes

your business tick. And it's a starting point for us to be able to break

down so we can drill down into different areas of your business to try to

get it to perform really well. This is what I've been leading

companies through for the last 10 years. We always start really high to

get a really sort of good picture about the value that your business delivers.

After we do that, we can very specifically target areas in your

business that might be quite painful. And in this case for you,

ones that drain and become a time

sucker. All right? We want to get rid of that monster and we want

to turn it into a trained thing that delivers value

to you, the business owner. Not just value in

terms of money, but value in terms of the time that it allows you to

do other things. Okay, Remember that purpose, that purpose

that you started your business for. Remember what you told yourself? You told yourself it

was going to be for flexibility and for freedom. Okay. Might not be going so

well right now. And we want to get there and I'm going to help you

do that. So let's get into it

profile. I'm going to get into the psychology

of why we don't do this. So there's going to be some things

here. Documentation's really hard.

Documentation takes time. Number one,

the it's all in my head delusion. We think that

we will remember everything because we built it. Our business

feels too simple to document and that's a

lie. I'll tell you why. Everything that you have

to take effort to remember something is

effort that you could be putting into something else.

So if you have it documented somewhere, you don't need to think about that. You

just know I can go there, I don't have to think about it.

It's why certain people wear the same thing every day,

right? They know where it is. They've already decided what they're doing. They

don't have to remember, they don't have to think about it. They just do it.

So your simple business that has all of these moving pieces

that you've internalized can now be let go. And that

is quite fraying. Then there's the imposter syndrome angle. So

writing it down, it makes it real. Some solo operators

are afraid that their business looks too small on paper. But I'm going

to give you something that's going to set you free from that. Okay?

Clarity beats complexity every time.

So a clear one pager will beat a vague

50 page business plan every time. There's

no doubt about it. If it's clear, I can act on it. If it's vague,

I don't know what to do with this person I've spoken to last

week. They have all these things going on in their head. They can't

seem to be able to get it down properly. This is going to help you

get through that. Okay. The next one is the I'll never

need this myth. It's not just for emergencies. This

is going to help you onboard contractors. It's going to help you get bank loans,

it's going to help you in partnership discussions and it's going to help you

sell the business. It will even help you with your personal life and it's going

to help you with your annual planning and saying no to out of

scope work. This is going to help you be really clear about what your

business is doing doing to achieve your goals as a

solo operator. So here's the profile

document. There will be A link to this on my website, by the way.

Lonewolfunleashed.com

forward/4p-profile.

That's 4P profile, section

one. Okay, we're going to identify the what, right?

One sentence business model. Here's the formula. Okay? I help

specific who achieve specific

outcome through your method.

Okay, So a bad example is I provide business solutions.

Really vague. Look, you're running a successful business. You know

what it's like to target a specific market. You should be able to know this

straight away. I help overwhelmed dentists automate their

patient booking so they can focus on dentistry, not administrative.

Right. Really specific. And this is gonna become your filter for everything.

Now, we have a real value proposition. Okay? It's not marketing fluff.

It's the real person and it's the real reason

people pay you. It's the expensive problem that you

solve. Okay? It's the why you versus

others, et cetera, et cetera. The real value proposition is

clients choose me because I fix their issues without requiring

meetings. That's an example. Then there's the target market

truth. Okay? Not who you want to work

with, who actually pays you. Look at your last 10

invoices. What do they have in common? Include the

psychographics, what keeps them up at night, what red

flags have you learned to avoid? All of those things.

Now we have section two, the value

flow. The value flow are your

processes. So I've broken down on previous episodes

how to do your first process map and what

processes are and why they're really important and what goes into them.

All those sorts of things. Your value flow is

the bridge between your supplier and your customer. It's where value

is created. It's your magic. And here you're going to list

the major ones. Okay, we're not talking about specific tasks, we're talking about.

Okay, how do I deliver an example? Here on that link

on my website, there's going to be a link to a Google sheet with some

examples in it. Okay, so this is an example from Sarah's WordPress

care. One of her processes is client acquisition and

qualification. There's another one for onboarding and site

audit, another one for monthly maintenance cycle. There's

also key inputs and key outputs. What do I need from my

client to be able to make this a success? Do I need access

to certain platforms, things like that? What are the key outputs?

Okay, Secure site maintenance, a monthly

report, peace of mind to our response,

Guarantee those types of things. And then what are your critical dependencies?

Okay, so for the value creation within your core Processes.

We're talking about the three to five things that you do to

create value. So it's not detailed, it's just the major

buckets. So you might have different services or different

adjacent services that you offer your customers. You know, I think that

pretty much any business should have, you know, an acquisition process or

something like that. I think that's definitely one of the major ones. But there's

also the how you deliver. So if you're delivering a service, you might have an

onboarding and then you'll have your type of delivery service. You

might have issue resolution and support. If you're doing physical product, you might have a

delivery, literal, pick, pack, delivery, deliver,

returns, type process. If you do have a

physical product, you might want to look up the score framework.

SCOR framework. It's a supply

chain operations reference model, I believe it's called

score model. That leads you through some of the major

processes that go into delivering physical product. Each one of

these processes becomes the next p in the four Ps, okay? They're

your processes. So here we're dealing with profile. The next one

we're dealing with processes. So you can already start to see that this

is becoming your scope for the next layer down. Okay, we're

starting to break it down into little pieces. Isn't this great? We're getting clear,

we're getting clarity, right. We're only in section two

and we're already starting to get good clarity about how to go for

the next stage so we can continue to understand and

optimize and systemize your business. So the example

flow, you know, there's some other examples here there. So there's intake and

discovery, there's solution design, there's implementation,

there's quality checks, there's delivery and handoff. Those might be some of your major

processes that you go through. Put some notes against each of them.

Give a summary about what it is. Right. So for Sarah's

WordPress care, her client acquisition and qualification

process, her notes against that are LinkedIn

outreach and referrals. So where are the clients coming from? What channels are

they coming from? Give some additional context. It doesn't have to be an

essay, just some quick notes. Then we have the value

outputs. So what goes out? So I touched on those before.

Then we have a supplier reality check. So what are my critical

suppliers or partners to deliver this?

What breaks if they disappear? And

here we're including software vendors, contractors, service providers, et

cetera. And critical means that the business will stop

without them. Not the, oh, I can start this

video player In a different application on my computer. No. If

I lose access to my CRM, this business is going to be in

trouble, and it's a fire that I really have to concentrate on putting

out. Your CRM should definitely be listed on there. So some other examples

there might be your payment processor, your email service,

or the one contractor who knows your entire

system. The process preview. Okay, so we've named

five to seven core processes, just names, and then we've put

some notes against them. They're your value creation engines, and

then they map on how you deliver value, so lead to

client, onboarding, service, delivery, et cetera, et cetera. So this is

dealing with operations. Okay, so we have core services, tech

stack, info architecture, all those types of

things that we need to be thinking about. What are we actually

selling? So the core services, what are we actually selling? So

for Sarah's WordPress care, she's selling monthly maintenance, emergency

fixes, site audits, speed optimization, all those types of

things. Her notes then include what percentage of her revenue

is monthly recurring, and then the price ranges or the

rate structure of how she's actually doing that. Then we have the tech

stack. Okay, so under operations, the section and then the

field is tech stack. What's the value that we

have in there? Again, it's not every tool. It's just the major ones. You know,

a whole bunch of different tools that she uses to deliver her

core services. And then underneath that, we have another one for

info architecture. Okay, where do the client files live?

Where do the templates live? All those types of things are listed here.

Now, you have some options here, because some of these things, your business might have

a lot of different things that has to be listed that are critical. You don't

have to put all of this in one field. You can just copy the field

multiple times down and make some different notes against that. That should not be a

problem. So then underneath that, we now have another

section, which is financial flow. So this is looking at

the money. All right, show me the money. These are your

revenue streams. Okay, so the first one under

there is revenue streams. We're gonna follow the money through the value

chain, which way the money comes in, which

process generates revenue. So if you've got a different core

process for each core service, and you've got that as

a service offering, which is generating revenue. You, you're going to put down your

different types of revenue streams in there and the

amounts. Okay, Then we have the cost

structure. Again, under financials, what's the cost

structure? What are the fixed costs that Hit every month.

What are the variable costs? What are the hidden

costs that you forget about, I. E. Your

time that you spent building that silly automation that you never ended up using.

What real hourly rate do you have after all those costs?

Which processes are profitable versus necessary evils?

Okay, in retail they have a thing called a loss leader,

right? So you might have a necessary evil that you

use to then deliver higher value services later

on. So in retail, your loss leader might be your chocolates

at the front of the store. People come in for chocolates, they buy other

stuff that's of a higher margin. There's those types of things that you need

to be thinking about. Then we have your different

banking and tools. Where's the money sitting? Do you have different

accounts for different purposes? What payment processes are you

using and what are their fees? And then what accounting

software and key reports are you running?

So this gives us an idea about how you're breaking down, how you're tracking that

and then how the money flows through. So I'll give you a really simple example.

For my business, I have a transaction account

that my expenses go out of and my money comes into.

And then I have a separate tax account where I reserve

any goods and services tax GST or pay G

payments or superannuation that needs to be paid.

Okay? So it's basically money that's not mine that I get paid.

So the client will pay me, let's say $33,300,

10% of that $3,000, which

is $300, which is on top is GST.

So that's going to move into my tax account. So I'm going

to just really briefly outline that in the banking and tools

there under the financial section. Then after that we have

continuity, planning, right? So

if nothing else, okay, if we have to run on the

absolute minimum right now because something's happened,

I've got a very minimum thing. You know, I've broken a leg, I've done

whatever it is. How do I manage my business when I have very

limited capacity? What are the key relationships that I have? So

list out your top clients, list out your top

suppliers that you might need to deal with. Backup is

Mike, who's a contractor. So three of those is

35% of her revenue. So she wants to keep them happy,

right? So the backup is, I can get Mike to do it because it's

going to be worth maintaining those clients because they make up such a large chunk

of her revenue. Then underneath that we have access

protocols. So who has access to what? So what kind of

permissions are we looking at? And that's just in case of personal emergency.

Right. If something has happened to you, how do we know what needs to happen

with your business and your accounts and all those types of things?

Then we have work in progress. So that's the last one.

So she's got here, check notion, active projects, maintenance,

a monthly maintenance, first and third month support tickets,

blah blah, blah, blah blah. Keep a short list of active projects or

maintenance cycles so nothing gets missed.

So what you can do now is you can map this into a simple diagram

that shows you this. So one box for each major step in your value

creation. Where the arrows show the flow,

suppliers on the left, customers on the right. You're in the magic in the middle.

And this is your business at 30,000ft. We're basically flying

over and we're just picking out that those major landmarks of your business that we

can spot. Why does this matter? So we've got

now something that shows where your value is

created. It reveals where the bottlenecks

and dependencies are. And it's starting to identify which processes need

to be documented first. Because you are in your business all the

time, 100%, you are already acutely aware of the

types of pain that you're suffering when you are trying to deliver.

You're already going to be thinking about the types of processes that need to be

looked at first in this list. So when we go to break down and do

a decomposition of your processes into sub

processes, we're going to start to be able to really target and make

sure that we cover off on those pain points straight away.

We're also going to be able to get from there a really good

picture of how you use your time and how long different

things take. So what comes next after this?

So what is the profile to process? Bridge,

as I said earlier, we have now the profile

has set up the process documentation. It has provided us a

scope. So each box in your value flow is

now a process map that we can develop out. So the profile

shows the forest and the process now will show the trees.

The profile says what? And the process

says how? Underneath all of this we'll have our performance metrics

that will measure these things. So now we can have a

prioritization matrix. We've covered this on an episode as well. You can

go back and listen to that. It's where I discuss how

to form up a backlog of your different opportunities. So we're going to put on

our backlog here which processes are the critical path,

which create the Most value, which cause the most

problems. Document them first.

So now we have an example connection. What does the profile say?

Onboarding creates first impression process details. There might be a

12 step onboarding workflow that you have for your business.

Right. So we're gonna throw those 12 steps onto a process map with your different

dependencies and how it flows and how the tasks flow from one to another.

And then the third P in the four P's framework is procedures.

Those will be in detail for each one of those tasks.

Then performance tracks those. So what are some examples of how

this provides value and clarity? So we have a consultant, we've mapped

their value flow and we realized that

30% of their effort created no value. So we killed a

reporting process that clients didn't read and it freed up

10 hours per month. Why do I know? Because that consultant was me.

I did that last year. Oh, I have a backup already

prepared. I don't have to worry about this. Let me get on the phone. This

clarity has allowed us to be proactive. Being proactive like

this is not a waste of time. Even if you never use it, it is

insurance for you. You spend a small amount of time so you don't have to

worry later. Okay? So you can set yourself up to

succeed at a later date where your competition would

have failed. This is creating a

competitive advantage. This is why this is the one pager

that you could save your business because it's providing you clarity that you

can act on.

So there are some key things here that when it comes to

value flow mapping that I'm going to share more next week on when

we cover the next P, which is processes. But some

really, really quick stuff. We don't want to go into too much

detail on those. We want to save those for the procedures.

We want to make sure that we don't miss our dependencies. We want to make

sure that we're not forgetting the customer journey. When we model a

process, it's an internal process of the things that you are

doing. Sometimes we can lose sight of what the customer is

experiencing. So how do we implement this? So you can

go to my website. I mentioned Before, Lone Wolf Unleashed.com,

loneWolfUnleashed.com 4P

profile that will provide you a link to the

Google Doc where you can take a copy of it and start to work in

it yourself. I've already got that started for you so you can get started on

that today. The week one challenge is

you need to block 90 minutes out to do this.

Just fill in the main components, that's 25

fields is on the example that I'm looking at. It should fit on a landscape

document. Think through all the key processes that you deliver value

through with your business. Identify those five to seven core processes.

Don't over complicate it. Just fill in the basics.

Then there's the connection test. Can someone see how value

flows through your business? Could you describe it to your grandmother?

Do your processes map to value creation?

Are the dependencies clear? And then the question is, is do

you know what you're going to document next? So this is how it all

connects to the four P's. Okay, it's cascading now. We've just

done profile. It's now going to filter down to process where each

major value creation step is, is done. Underneath that are your

procedures which will then lead into performance

which measures the value. So think about, you know, what data is coming out of

this, what do we need to be able to track? So now you should have

in your mind what documentation priority you have,

which process you're going to document first, that creates the most value,

which process fails you the most often or a process that you want

to delegate first. A process that you want to automate

portions of. Now we have clarity.

So here are my closing thoughts and my closing rant.

The value flow reality is this. Most

solo operators have never mapped their value flow.

They are too busy working in their business

and not on their business. This is the beginning,

the profile is the beginning to working on your business, creating

systems that work for you, that free up time so

you can go and do other stuff of higher value. This

works. This is a system that

works. You cannot improve what you cannot see.

The profile makes it visible. So now you have

strategic power. Value flow equals your model

visualized. It shows where to focus

your improvement efforts. It's going to reveal opportunities

for automation and delegation. Just like I said, we've done an episode on that

about how you can calculate the benefits of that so you can prioritize well

and it helps you identify what is core versus what is noise.

You might get to the end of this and go, you know what? Two of

my core services just aren't working for me.

They're not even getting me extra business and they're losing me money. Why am I

doing this? Cut them. If you're losing money on

them, cut them. You're immediately better off. Refer those soul

sucking clients to your competitors. I'm not sure this is a good fit

anymore. My prices are going up. I don't think I can help you.

Here's someone I can refer you to. So what is the

freedom angle here? Clear value flow equals easier

delegation. It's easier automation.

So get started today. Head over to my website. You can get that

lonewolfunleashed.com 4p

profile. There you'll be able to get access to the Google

document where this template and examples live. So you can do it

for yourself. Thank you so much for joining me today.

I really appreciate your time. You could have been doing so many other things other

than listening to me rant about how to get clarity on your business and how

to save your business. And for that I thank you.

I'm opening up an expression of interest to

a community I'm creating for solo operators who want

to set themselves free from their business and get their business under control.

You can sign up for that Lone Wolf unleashed dot com. There is an

expression of interest button there that you can press to sign up.

Basically, the premise is, I will help you do all of

this, all the different layers of the four Ps, and we

can share with each other about what is working. And there's going to be

accountability there to say, hey, look, you said you're going to do this thing, let's

crack on and do it. So if you're interested in doing that, in

transforming your business and therefore transforming your life, I'd be

really excited to be able to work with you on that. And that's going to

do us for this week. Thank you so much for joining me today and I'll

see you next time. Until then, live larger and switch off

sooner.