“Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it,
and I shall move the world.” ~ Archimedes
I wrote my first business plan in 2005 as part of an assignment in one of my Master of Entrepreneurship courses. Sixty-five pages long and filled with charts, graphs, pro forma statements, and data, it was a tome of tedium.
It was painful to create and equally painful to read. My focus throughout was on proving my idea to be sound, viable, and worthy of an investor’s attention and support. I searched for evidence I was right, and that my business concept was buttoned up.
Absent from the document, and my entire approach to creating it, were a sense of exploration, and discovery. I moved away from a state of wonder and curiosity. I didn’t playfully weigh possibilities of what could be, nor search for alignment with how I wanted to work and bring my idea to life.
I simply wanted my concept and me to be right.
After I submitted my business plan to my professors, I never looked at it again. It remained in a binder on a bookshelf, a dusty reminder of what happens when we approach planning in a formulaic, forced manner.
As we head into October, and move to the beginning of Q4, our thoughts tend to turn toward a focus on what the following year can bring. What we might create and/or shift in our businesses to elevate traction and revenue. Programs and practices we might want to shed entirely or bring to life.
No longer tied to a white-knuckle approach to planning, this simple guide provides the ultimate leverage for creating what we hold in our mind’s eye.
Obtaining goals is no longer a matter of brute force, but rather flow, and move effortlessly.
