Thread: business plan necessary?

Business plans are a waste of time for the most part.

How do you know whats going to happen, before you make your first sale? You don't.

You need an idea of what you are going to do, a plan, but everything in business changes so fast, so the business you start may not be the business you have 2 months from now, especially with the interweb businesses.

I love to see guys who have 5 year projections. Always brings a smile to my face.

Thanks for the reply and haha yeah 5 years a ton can change. Im just going to build and let the customers direct me. Ill prolly throw down some stuff on paper but theres no way ill go through a massive business plan wasting time

Yes, I agree with both JackEdwards and MJ. They are a waste of time, usually. The only time you need one is when you are seeking funding (which is extremely difficult to get, anyways).

I wrote a 30+ page business plan with projections, cash flow statements, etc. once. What a huge waste. I knew I was bullshitting all the numbers, which made it difficult to even complete.

The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur is a good read, and actually provides a couple of useful, simple documents that are worth the time to write.

I can fill you in, business plans are a waste of time.

Originally Posted by JackEdwards

Business plans are a waste of time for the most part.

How do you know whats going to happen, before you make your first sale? You don't.

You need an idea of what you are going to do, a plan, but everything in business changes so fast, so the business you start may not be the business you have 2 months from now, especially with the interweb businesses.

I love to see guys who have 5 year projections. Always brings a smile to my face.

But college professors say business plans are a must, you will fail without them, I built a beautiful 20 year business plan that covers everything and anything that will happen....I'm ready!

I've wasted more time on business plans than I care to admit....

Although I will say, in the case of approaching an investor - a BRIEF and TO-THE-POINT business plan of 5-10 pages is crucial to have.

Originally Posted by JackEdwards

I love to see guys who have 5 year projections. Always brings a smile to my face.

Every time I would start one I would see this and would think, "how am I supposed to know what is going to happen five years from now?" This part always stopped me from proceeding and potentially wasting a lot of time.

Like many other "have to's", if the small business guru's are saying you should do this, then you should probably go in the opposite direction.

From my own personal experience the only benefits that i found from doing up business plans were

1. It helped me plan the business structure out better in my head. Kind of like a glorified mindmap scenario
2. It helped me obtain initial bank funding

However i would say that ive never referred back to a business plan after it was written. It sat in a file or drawer and gathered dust.

I came across this article a while back and enjoyed it....

Might be of use to you!

Business Plans Are a Huge, Fat, Stinkin

All the best
Brian

I had a great (successful) professor who taught entrepreneurship.

He said business plans were worthless. BUT, he would still spend 6 months to 1 year writing a business plan for a venture of any size.

He argued that it wasn't so much about the business plan, but more so about putting the business together. It just so happened that a business pan would be a by-product of this time spent putting the business together.