The Business Plan That Always Works, Part I - Michael Gerber

The Business Plan That Always Works, Part I - Michael Gerber

Yes, believe it or not, there is such a plan. A business plan that always works.
And believe it or not, you’re going to learn how to create such a plan, your plan, in the next few moments.

Now for those of you who believe deep down in the recesses of your cynically- disposed hearts that there can’t possibly be anything that always works–- especially a plan–the following is going to be a bit of a stretch for you. But hang in with me here.

The Business Plan That Always Works is so devilishly simple and straightforward, you’ll wonder why you didn’t see it before. You see, that’s the beauty of it, this Business Plan That Always Works.
It’s so very simple. And that’s probably the primary reason it always works. The Business Plan That Always Works is so simple that anyone who understands it can do it…which is to say, that if you can’t do a plan easily, there’s no point in planning. Despite what you’ve learned over the years, planning is only hard when it’s done the wrong way. And to do a plan easily requires that you approach the whole subject of planning in a completely different way than you’re accustomed to. But I’m getting ahead of my story.

The Business Plan That Always Works is built upon one Fundamental Principle that all the plans that never work fail to understand.

(When I say "all the plans that never work," I’m referring to the kind of planning you’re accustomed to doing–if you do any planning at all– the kind of planning that doesn’t work, has never worked, will never work, the kind of planning every single professional you know who’s trying to plan is attempting to do even as we speak despite the little-discussed-and-depressing fact that not one of their best laid plans will ever make one difference in their lives at all other than to unnecessarily frustrate, infuriate and intimidate them, while keeping them

busy– uselessly and unproductively– for hours upon end!) You know the kind of plans I’m talking about here. The kind of plans that create gobs of guilt because you don’t keep them?

The kind of plans that create enormous bouts of self-loathing because you never fulfill them? The kind of you make with great effort and tedium, only to find yourself later on doing something completely different than you had planned to do and wondering how you got there from where you began?

But let’s get back to that one Fundamental Principle I’m talking about
that differentiates The Business Plan That Always Works from every other
plan that doesn’t.
I call this Fundamental Principle, the Heart-Centered Principle of
Planning.

(Now, bear with me here. I know this could begin to test your hidebound
mpatience. You’re an entrepreneur after all. World-wise and world-weary.
You’ve seen everything, done everything, been beaten up by everything. You
know with every close-to-cynical breath you breathe that language used
capriciously can be a dangerous thing. After all, don’t you do that for a
living: use language to produce results? Well, of course you do. Don’t we
all? And it can get us all into serious trouble. But despite that, bear with me anyway. This path I'm leading us down is a path no one has ever taken you down before. And it’s not capricious. It’s deadly earnest. And because of that it can get a little sticky in moments. It can test your patience in moments. It can put me into question in your mind in moments. Despite all that, and despite your natural reservations, let’s proceed a few steps further and I believe you’ll truly begin to relish this thing we’re going to do together, this thing I call The Business Plan That
Always Works.)

The Heart-Centered Plan is so distinctly different from its opposite, The Head- Centered Plan, that it’s important to define the distinctions carefully.

There are Seven Essential Rules of Heart-Centered Planning, of creating The Business Plan That Always Works for you.
These seven rules are:

Rule One
The first rule says that Heart-Centered Planning begins and ends with a feeling, while Head-Centered Planning begins and ends with a thought. To understand this rule, it is critical that you know the difference between
thought and a feeling. Most people don’t. (Don’t laugh, they really don’t.)

Most people often confuse their thoughts with their feelings and their feelings with their thoughts. How do you know the difference between a thought and a feeling? A feeling resides inside your body; a thought resides inside your head. Let me say that again so that it sinks in. A feeling resides inside your body, while a thought resides inside your head. Most of what you’re doing right now as you read this article is a thought which is going to turn into a feeling, rather than a feeling which is going to turn into a thought. Heart-Centered Planning starts with a feeling, turns into a thought, and ends with a feeling. Head-Centered Planning begins with a thought, turns into a feeling, and ends with a thought.

The rule here is that any plan that ends up in your head is a thought, and, because of that, won’t work. The Business Plan That Always Works is dominated by your feelings, not by your thoughts.

And because of that, it is propelled forward because you want it to work, as the expression says, with all your heart. The point I’m making here is that despite everything you’ve been taught to the contrary, cerebral has no momentum of its own. Thoughts die cold and lonely. A plan which describes the future, with no heart, is a plan destined to fail. The Business Plan That Always Works therefore, is a plan which begins and ends in your heart…which means it’s a living plan, not a dead one. Which means that it possesses an enormous amount of energy, which people describe as passion.

And we all know what passion can do when it’s poured into a personal cause. That’s what The Business Plan That Always Works is, after all, a personal cause filled with passion.

End of Part One