Business is Full of Beaver Dams
Struggle is Good. Embrace The Dams.
Traditional business plan thinking tells you that if you plan well enough, you’ll avoid all the “problems”. But usually it’s those “problems” that lead you to the best plan.
Tag: strategic plan
There are 10 posts tagged strategic plan.
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A Business Plan Will Not Make You More Successful
Palo Alto Software, which makes business planning software, just did a survey to their own users to show that those who completed business plans that they started with Palo Alto were nearly twice as likely to successfully grow their businesses or obtain capital as those who didn’t finish.
This research is a classic example of “there are lies, damnable lies, and statistics” (stolen from Twain who got it from someone else). An even more reasonable conclusion – people who DO SOMETHING and follow through on it are twice as likely to successfully grow their business.
Planning won’t even get you a good plan, let alone success.
Stop thinking. Get moving.
Planning does not create success or even the best plan. It also doesn’t create action. Most planning just creates paper, spreadsheets, complexity, doubt, paralysis, and dream-dampening. There are two things that create a far better plan than planning itself.
Making Money is not an Empowering Vision
To build a business that provides you the lifestyle you want, you need a vision that motivates you. And guess what? Making money is not an empowering vision. I know plenty of people who’ve tried it including me.
The Four Cornerstones of Business Success & Significance
The Four Cornerstones of Success and Significance are A Big Motivator and Three Bosses.
- The Big Motivator – or The Big Why – Lifetime Goals
- Boss #1 – A simple Strategic Plan that runs my daily business
- Boss #2 – Process Maps and Process Descriptions to create freedom and a reproduceable business (and make it worth a lot more money)
- Boss #3 – Outside Eyes on my Business to catch the blindspots and bring balance and completeness to my leadership.
How I bought 10-15 days off, 21 mths from now.
We had five days straight of overcast, rainy, sloppy weather Friday thru Tuesday in Denver, something we almost never see. It dominated Memorial Day weekend and kept us all inside for the most part.
You’re almost certainly a hostage of your business and don’t know it.
During the Iranian hostage crisis in 1980, I listened to an expert describe why being a hostage for a short period of time was exponentially worse then being sentenced to prison for many years.
Every Business Owner Needs Two Bosses. Do You Have Them?
Ever feel like you’ve got 11 ping pong balls to hold under the water and only 10 fingers? There is a solution.
Don’t Be a Mosquito in a Nudist Colony
Why Lifetime Goals are so important to what I do tomorrow, and why tomorrow is so important to my Lifetime Goals.
The mosquito in the nudist colony is thinking, “I know what to do, I just don’t know where to begin.” As business owners, we might have a similar experience, either not knowing where to begin, or not knowing what to do next to take our business to maturity. We have so little time – prioritizing what to do next is critical to our success.
Why Bad Plans Will Make You More Money Than Good Plans
The Marine Motto.
When I was on the Marine soccer team many years ago, our team action plan was:
“Bad plans carried out violently many times yield good results. Do something.”
We weren’t the most talented team out there. We played a Brazilian team that was like watching a Monet get painted, or poetry in motion – something like that. The ball stuck to their feet like velcro and they passed and controlled beautifully. When we were lucky enough to get in the way, we would kick the ball as far down the field as we could, run under it and hope we got there first. It was a bad plan, but we carried it out with commitment, and more often than not, our bad plan worked better than their good plan, because we were more committed to our plan than they were to their good one. We didn’t win the league, but we went far beyond our collective skill set, and made it to the finals. Not bad for a bad plan.
