By Dan Boudreau

The strongest resistance to business planning typically comes from diehard pessimists, who ask, “What good are my 3-year financial projections if I step off the curb tomorrow and get hit by a bus?”

That’s a great question that will stop anyone from ever doing a business plan. And it seems logical enough, until you consider that everything great that happens in the world comes about because somebody decided to make an impact on the future.

Truthfully, you might be the most unpredictable element of your business plan. Here are a few of the ways in which you can become the real wildcard in your business plan.

1. You might not believe you can succeed, which is the kiss of death for any business. Your lack of belief in your business assures its failure.
2. You might hate managing people, which is impossible to know until you try. Business owners need to be skilled at managing several groups of people; employees, customers, suppliers, and creative teams.
3. After going through all the effort of getting your business started, you might discover that you really want to work for someone else and not carry the responsibility of owning and running a business.
4. You might discover that you can’t turn the business off, that you simply worry about it until you burnout.
5. You might learn that you’re not a salesperson. Not everyone is, but successful business owners are.
6. As the owner of a business, you might find that the activities that fill your hours and days—marketing, selling, logistics—are things you really don’t enjoy. This leads to artists who insist on doing all art while ignoring the business. It happens to the technician who gets immersed in his profession and refuses to get out and market his business.
7. You might learn that you’re hopeless with finances, and that you’re missing some of the necessary knowledge and skills to manage your business—how to prepare a cash flow forecast, how to read an income statement, how to keep records.
8. You might discover that you’re disorganized, and that you dread having to plan your days, weeks and months. Does freedom unleash your creative spirit, or do you self-destruct when faced with an open road?
9. After getting immersed in your business, you might discover that you work too long and too hard for the amount of money you earn. It’s true that many small and micro businesses never get fine tuned to the point of earning a profit; too many evolve into a twisted form of enslavement.

Any business worth its salt will present its owner with many learning opportunities. Each speed bump can be taken as an opportunity to learn and grow; or it can be the roadblock that motivates you to change direction and get a job.

It seems insane to attempt to predict the future, but it seems even more so to accept a life of drudgery in a dead end job. For those who aspire to improve their work life by working at something they enjoy, business planning is a great place to start, even if it seems a bit crazy at first.

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Article Archive: Entrepreneurship