You should be surprised that I’m writing this foreword for a book about business planning. After all I’ve blogged about how I started a venture of mine called Truemors.com without a business plan. I also wrote a blog posting called “is a Business Plan Necessary?” I’ve spent a lot more time and effort talking and writing about one’s pitch than one’s plan.
However, it’s exactly because of that history that I wanted to write about this book. Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan is about planning, not the plan. Tim Berry says that instead of a ponderous document, do the planning that every business needs to focus, prioritize, and manage. Do that, and, if that’s all you’re going to use, nothing else. Don’t sit back waiting for a big plan to be done: get going, start planning, start thinking, and do whatever part that is going to help you run your business better.
In this book, Tim explains how to build your plan around a core (he calls it the “heart”) strategic combination of market, identity, and focus. I like the idea that the real plan is not the output format, but what’s supposed to happen, and why, and when, and how much money. It’s ideas like this that make me say that everybody running a business should develop a plan, but only in the simple, pragmatic context that this book evangelizes. And that’s why you should buy this book.
—Guy Kawasaki
author of Reality Check and The Art of the Start
Tim Berry is the founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software and Bplans.com. Follow him on Twitter @Timberry.
