How sure should you be about your business plan?

Filed in archive Philosophy on August 3, 2006

A few years ago when I first wandered into a satellite of the Small Business Development Center at Wilkes University, it was to seek help drafting a plan for purchase of an existing business.

Later with a business partner then with the help of my wife, I created not one but two elaborate plans, a second when my initial business partnership had fallen through.

A year later I was still tweaking, still refining.

Perhaps common sense should have told me that a business plan so detailed it took more than a year to create with projections made at the urging of an SBA staffer that were so guesstimated they could not possibly be correct stood little chance of surviving an ever changing marketplace.

It didn't. The small business professionals had the experience. Who was I to question?

Another year later I found myself bitter and frustrated, still being urged to make changes, being more convinced every day that the advisors hired to aid small business people knew no more about small businesses than I did.

These experiences came back to me as I read this post by Brad Shorr titled "How To Non-Plan Your Business" on Yaro Starak's Entrepreneur's Journey blog.

A little less than a year ago, Shorr left a high paying job to start up a consulting business he had only vague notions about.

Ten months later, after focusing on simply working hard, he has slowly developed a business model that combines his passions in a way it would have been hard to imagine back then.

Shorr's story in turn brings to mind an Eastern European bootstrapper from Bucharest who told me that a year after starting his company the main value of his business plan was to show him how wrong he had been.

There's something about this bootstrapping business that's like exploring unknown territory. And looking at it that way, it seems kind of silly to take along a road map.

Maybe there are businesses that are so well financed that a detailed plan becomes a necessity and projections can be more accurately researched. I doubt it, though.

As bootstrap guru Greg Gianforte observed:

When you take external funding, you become a slave to your business plan and you have to constantly answer to third parties: banks, private investors, grant agencies, etc... Bootstrappers, on the other hand, aren't hampered by these forces. They can change direction overnight if that's what circumstances call for. This adaptability significantly increases their likelihood of near- and long-term success.