I’ve been trying to write a business plan, because I know I will need one if I ever get to give up the day job, but haven’t made much progress.
It’s all boxes and straight lines and charts and columns. I have no idea what to write. I don’t even understand some of the questions. Key findings from desk research, marketing strategy, financial forecasts… how are you supposed to know all that when you haven’t started yet?
And then I found this:
I’ve had it in my hands for about three hours and already it has changed my life. It comes with a handy checklist:
I don’t know why I didn’t think of it myself, but there we are. It’s much easier to think ‘what’s wrong with me?’ rather than ‘what is it about this format that isn’t working for me?’ My left-brained husband wouldn’t dream of hanging a picture without a spirit level. I would bang a nail in and eyeball it. It wouldn’t bother me if it wasn’t even straight.
Almost every sentence in the first chapter has me jumping up and down in my chair. This particularly:
“The challenge is when left-brain thinking comes too early in the visioning and planning process and kills the party with its questioning, judgement, and need for every single piece of the puzzle to make absolute sense before taking that first step. This limits your thinking: good ideas are quashed before they’ve even had a chance to form.”
So now I know a business plan can be pictures and colours and shapes, there is nothing stopping me and I find I know exactly what I want and where I’m wanting to go.
The Business Plan book says ‘let it unfold’. I’ve had this accordion-style sketch book since Christmas and have been waiting for it to tell me what it wants. Of course, all this time it’s just been waiting for me.
I’ve gone from constantly putting it off because it’s dull to actually wanting to get started on it.
This sounds very intriguing! I remember doing a business plan, many years ago, and finding it deeply inaccurate and completely unhelpful. Maybe I was genuinely working on the wrong sort of business plan!
Highly recommend this version. It may still be inaccurate but at least it’s fun doing it 🙂
I was actually laughing reading that list (and nodding at the same time). I have no need to make money out of creating (I’d soon fail anyway!) but I’ve had many ‘what if’ moments over the years. I hope the rest of the book is as helpful for you as the beginning.
Thanks so much, still in the thinking stages and keeping an open mind 🙂 Yes, the list was a real revelation. One of those moments where you feel as if the author is speaking directly to you.