The Agile Startup: Quick and Dirty Lessons Every Entrepreneur Should Know

Business Plans Are Worthless

Your business plan is worth less than the paper (or bytes) it’s written on. Especially in the beginning, things are so fluid that it would be too time consuming to maintain any semblance of a professional, written plan. However, it’s not about the plan; it’s about the process of planning. By using a business plan as a framework to focus your efforts, you can collect answers to important questions that should help illuminate the path forward. As Dwight Eisenhower said, “Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” You identify and plug the holes in your strategies and on your team, so don’t think of your business plan as the final say on your business; think of it as a lighthouse, guiding your go-to-market strategy.

Using the business planning process in this way forces you to focus on the key issues, brings to light important dynamics, and helps uncover central questions that must be answered. Only after you have turned most of your key assumptions into facts, and your team rallies around a singular vision, does it make sense to spend time polishing your plan.

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