Fundamentals for Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur: From Business Idea to Launch and Management

9. Planning: Should You, When Do You, and How Do You?

9.0 Overview of Plans and Planning

Plans are nothing; planning is everything.

Perhaps no quote better sums up our fundamental position on planning than that from the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe during World War II, the president of Columbia University, and also the president of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower. To us it is not the plan that is critical as much as it is the process and “doing” associated with planning. It is the learning how to gather the information. It is seeing and understanding how different parts of the business affect other parts. As the great scientist, statesman, philosopher, and raconteur Benjamin Franklin stated:

If you fail to plan, you ...