Business plans are a waste of time. Shoot now and adjust later.
There is of course an important caveat to the admittedly brash and generalising statement above. If you are looking for money to start your new venture from someone else, then you certainly need one. In the majority of cases though, for entrepreneurs who are building their empires with just hard work, crude tools, late nights and a lot of hustle — Your time is much better spent trying to find someone to buy what you have to sell. Spending weeks, if not months planning what your business is going to look like in a years time, is procrastination disguised as conscientiousness at its highest level.
Let’s call a business plan what it is - A business guess. This is true, right the way through to your expectations of risk exposure, cash flow projections and financial summaries. If you have delayed taking action, because you want to finish your business plan first and aren’t looking for external finance, then it is fear that holds you back.
I’m not advocating having no plan of course. To get anywhere we need a clear objective, a set of tactics and a strategy to mobilise them into meaningful action. You need to know what you are going to sell and which people are most likely to buy. Understanding your expenses and the true cost placing your product in the hand of the consumer is obviously vital too. This is work that can be measured in hours though, not days or weeks.
When you know what you are going to sell and who you are going to sell to, basic maths will tell you if the model has legs. Once that has been confirmed, there’s only one way in the world to know for sure. Trying it out.
Contacting the suppliers and ordering samples, perhaps an initial small order are examples of this kind of action. As is placing an advert, building a simple landing page or adding your stock to online marketplaces, like Amazon or Etsy. It is these actions that count because they put you in a position where you can start to conceivably make money. While you’re writing your business plan, you haven’t begun. It starts the day you commit yourself to the project and taking the actions needed to make your first sale possible.
This often requires a little bit of money down, but you can usually improvise and rarely will you need more than a few hundred dollars. This is a good thing, because when you have spent your own money, you have finally put skin in the game. This motivates action, compelling you to find a way to make it work and recoup the funds quickly.
Businesses take shape in their execution, not their conception. As we start to sell one product or service, we learn about new areas of opportunity. These niches aren’t visible until the journey begins and your horizon shifts. The model is adapted to fit the realities of the marketplace and our experience of what works. None of this invaluable analysis and adaptation can begin, until you have started to sell that first product or service.
Ideas are worth nothing. If Mark Zuckerberg had tried to sell his idea for Facebook before it was developed, he would have got what it was worth - Nothing. Someone like me would have just done it themselves. You can’t patent an idea, just the way you intend to execute it. Facebook, Ebay and Amazon as conceptions are without value. Once developed though, protected by proprietary systems and their market dominance, they are worth billions.
Your idea is worth nothing either and you cannot protect it, until you have figured out a way to build it. Value starts to generate when you lay the first brick. Commit yourself to the task at hand by spending enough time and/or money to develop your minimum viable product. Then get selling. Analyse your performance and adapt. Repeat. Any deviation from the model is wasted energy, hesitating on the edge of achievement.
David Black is an author and location independent entrepreneur (digital nomad) living in Thailand. He is the producer of the popular YouTube channel “Digital Nomad X” and in his first book, the “21st Century Emperor”, he shares the inspiring story of how he left the corporate world in London and started on the path to securing genuine financial and location independence. You can learn more about his ideas on business and freedom on the Digital Nomad X blog.
