Why I’m Not Writing Another Business Plan

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I recently told a friend and entrepreneur about my Gusset Beard, LLC business planning woes. Business planning requires a tremendous amount of information. That’s its value. I’ve started several business plans and concluded each time that: (1) I’m wasting my time; and (2) I need to start the business in order to get some of the information I need to plan the business.

It turns out my friend concluded the same thing, and took a different approach to planning with his company. They used Guy Kawasaki’s 10-slide pitch deck, as an agile business planning alternative. It’s always great to hear that others had the same thought before me — even better when it means less planning, and killing a few birds with one stone. (You also end up with a current pitch deck, and a good sketch of the business plan you’ll write — if one becomes necessary.)

The Deck

An overview of the deck

The deck doesn’t let you off the hook that easy either. You still have to think about the major classes of challenges your business will face, how to meet those challenges, and how to present information about it. However, the deck keeps someone like me (with a preternatural love of depth and thoroughness) from getting mired in the details of every possible contingency.

Nor would a compendious business plan necessarily prove helpful. Entrepreneur and author, Susan Wilson Solovic, in her (great) book It’s Your Biz, describes struggling with an unwieldily business plan until she created a simplified summary of it. As I see it, this deck just cuts out the middle step.

Someday the full business plan may be necessary. Until then, I think I’m going with the pitch deck.

Kawasaki’s book: Art of the Start.

Disclosure: Some of you will also know that Guy Kawasaki recently sent me one of his old business cards from Apple. My judgement may be totally compromised. ;-)

Anyone have experience with this? Has Guy’s business card distorted reality beyond hope? Is this a fevered dream induced by too much organic tea and too little sleep? Let me know!

Starting up, it’s exhilarating

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I’m starting my own web and social media consultancy, Gusset Beard, LLC. The first two weeks of this year have flown most of my “spare” time has been a flurry of forms (web and otherwise), but I’m starting to get a handle on it.

Things are starting to run. I have business cards, social media accounts, and a host of other stuff falling into place — most importantly, clients!

The busy-ness of business, I expected. What I didn’t expect was the energy, the exhilaration. It just feels good to see things I’ve been thinking about for six months finally taking shape.

Text from your computer, pt. 1

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Back burner project: have one of my computers notify me when certain things happen. For instance, I’d like to get certain weather warnings via SMS. One use of this would be kind of a poor man’s home automation. Why not have my computer text me when I should open or close windows? I’ll be working on this project in my spare time for the next few days and updating here as I go.

If anyone is inclined to try this along with me, here are some valuable pointers that we might need:

Cause you know your computer <3's you!

Sandy Storms Settling

Sandy is settling down a little. Although it’s still gusty here in Northeast Ohio, it’s much better than this morning. Even this far away, we had power outages, people without heat, and we heard a lot of sirens. I feel really fortunate to have had power and Internet for all but a few minutes — especially as reports of damage in New Jersey show up in my social media and news feeds.