Progress beats perfection every day of the week. This is evident every day of the week with business planning. The number one thing that holds a lot of people back from making progress on their business plans is fine-tuning until they have the plan perfect. Overthinking leads to under-executing.
Business Planning Doesn’t Have to be Hard
Your business plan should be a short and powerful document. A lot of the free resources out there seem to have templates for business plans that are dozens of pages long. Not only does a plan that big take ages to write, there’s no way you’d ever be able to memorise it all to know that you’re on track with it.
Keep it simple. Condense your business plan into the core things you need to have and then memorise it to keep it all top of mind.
Keep It Short, Strategic & Aspirational
We recommend that the core of your plan should be just a single page. On that single page you should be able to articulate your vision and purpose for your business, your values and what you want to achieve, as well as high-level financials and KPIs. Those are the essentials, the only additional thing is to take action, and you can include an annual action plan on the reverse of that first page.
As an example, in 2006, Elon Musk wrote a blog about Tesla. At the end of that blog post he had four short lines that were essentially his business plan for the company:
“Build sports car,
Use that money to build an affordable car,
Use that money to build an even more affordable car,
While doing the above, also provide zero emission electric power generation options,”
The above is kind of a cross-over between a vision, a purpose and a plan. But it works as a start. You can see where you want to end up, you know the stages you have to go through to get there and now you can get started. Elon must have been on to something as the business that started from that plan is now worth the best part of a trillion dollars.
Get Out of Your Own Way
The number one challenge we see time and again from smart, experienced business owners is just over-complicating everything.
This first challenge we have to overcome is digging them out of the swamp of complexity they’ve buried themselves in. Then we can start making some progress.
When you’re starting out, your focus needs to be simple and narrow. Don’t get lost in the noise, tune into the core of your business and work from there.
There’s no end of problems in the world, so tune into one of them for your customers, solve it. Do that over and over again to fine tune your solution. Progress leads to perfection over time. Progress beats perfection on day one.
If you need a hand simplifying your business and getting progress with your business planning, we can help.
Get in Touch
Our team of Business Advisors are experts in Business Planning, so if you need a hand with the planning, the accountability or a little coaching, we’re here to help. Book in a free Discovery Meeting to see if we’re a good fit to work together.