Dear Entrepreneur,
Be ready to change faster than Superman in a phone booth. Inevitably when building a business, you’ll have to respond to unexpected crises at any given moment. It would be a lot easier to do if you had a red cape and super powers. But without that advantage, you’ll just have to adapt quickly.
The truth is, even if you have a “plan,” it may not be worth much in six months or six minutes. Instead of a business plan, think about developing a series of micro-plans. These should not be as forward-looking or detailed as typical business plan, a page or two covering a few months will do. It will at least give you a starting point and make it much easier to adjust and iterate on.
See the future, write it down. Guess what? Bill Gates and Steve Jobs didn’t have formal business plans when they started Microsoft and Apple. What they did have was a vision for where the products would go.
Your vision doesn’t have to be as world-changing as “putting a computer on every desk in every home” or “a computer for the rest of us.” What matters more than the content of these visions is that they are very specific and simple to understand. Create a vision that meets these two requirements then make sure you write it down and keep it somewhere visible.
With love,
Chidi