The book is Slide:ology, and this five-minute video on bnet (a Harvard Business School site) is a great summary.

If you can’t get the video off of this site, click here for the source video on bnet.

Here’s a great resource for you, or a collection of resources, as you think through the marketing, identity, and focus factors that make up the heart of your plan.

It’s almost too big, but at least it’s divided into subsections, and it’s a great list. Thanks to Spotlight ID for this list of 250 top blog posts on advertising, marketing, media, and PR.

I got the tip on that list from Seth Godin’s blog post of last week, which started with that list, and then highlighted his top 20 favorites from his blog. He’s a clear winner in the top 250, and for good reason. You’ll find him referenced frequently in the plan-as-you-go approach (this site, and the book).

Add Duct Tape Marketing to that list (because I’ve referenced that in this site and the book too) and you have a lot of really good food for thought about your core marketing strategy.

I’ve just finished a 12-minute online video (presentation, slides, with me talking) summary of Chapter 2, Attitude Adjustment. Click here for that … it does require Flash Player and Java on your system, and the window has to be about 860 pixels wide to show the whole thing.

I’ve finished a nine-minute video showing you how to download and install the free add-on, available on this site (in the resources tab), to implement a default plan-as-you-go business plan outline as an add-on to Business Plan Pro.

If for any reason you don’t see the video here then you can click here for the youtube version of the same thing.

This video shows you how to download the add-on, install it into Business Plan Pro, and then use it to create a plan-as-you-go plan. Then it shows you a bit about how to use that customized outline within the software.

And, just as a reminder, there’s also this video showing you how to just still with the standard default Business Plan Pro, and also use the plan-as-you-go approach. And for that first one as well there’s a youtube alternative in case the flash player doesn’t work for you.

This is a flash video, set for 800×600 dimensions, which will require that you install Flash on your system if you don’t already have it. just click this link … Planning as you go with Business Plan Pro … it should open up a new window with a media player showing, and an obvious arrow to click.

The source file was set up at 800 x 600 resolution, so you might want to resize the window to show the resolution at its best. If the window you use to watch this is too big, then it looks fuzzy.

And here, below, is a flash player version of the same thing (I hope) …

If this doesn’t work for you, it might be a matter of Internet band width or compatibility with flash. I’d like to know, so leave me a comment and I’ll get back to you.

Web searches change. To keep this information up to date, we leave it on the blog where it’s easy to update …

• Estimate web traffic. This is suggested in Section 4, Flesh and Bones, as part of the example of estimating traffic for a sample startup blog business.

The Art of the Start Video, by Guy Kawasaki

20 good videos for entrepreneurs from Stanford.

What You Need to Know About Financials, by me

Develop Your Business Plan, by me

Two of My Books

• If you’re starting a business or even thinking about starting a business, please look for Start Your Business in Three Weeks, with Sabrina Parsons as co-author. As I’m writing this I’m revising that one, and they’re both scheduled to come out at about the same time.

• Hurdle: The Book on Business Planning by Tim Berry Read more about this book…

  If you want a step-by-step guide to creating the formal business plan, try my Hurdle: the Book on Business Planning. It’s posted as its own free website at www.hurdlebook.com, and you can download the ebook-and-printable version as well, at www.bplans.com. Or you can buy it from Palo Alto Software or www.amazon.com

Books in This Book

This book recommends or cites several other books at various places. I do tend to refer to books I like and recommend.

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	The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything by Guy Kawasaki Read more about this book…
	Guerilla Marketing in 30 Days (Guerrilla Marketing) by Levinson, Al Lautenslager Read more about this book…
	Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide by John Jantsch Read more about this book…
	Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync? by Seth Godin Read more about this book…
	All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World by Seth Godin Read more about this book…
	The One Minute Manager by Kenneth H. Blanchard, Spencer Johnson Read more about this book…
	Rules For Revolutionaries: The Capitalist Manifesto for Creating and Marketing New Products and Services by Guy Kawasaki, Michele Moreno Read more about this book…
	Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell Read more about this book…
	Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath, Dan Heath Read more about this book…
	The Three Signs of a Miserable Job: A Fable for Managers (And Their Employees) by Patrick M. Lencioni Read more about this book…

I’ve been writing books for a lot of years, but I’m also blogging and doing podcasts and putting more and more of my daily work on the web. My approach to business planning has changed a lot, and what I expect to do with a book has changed a lot. This book is not what you expect.

A Different Approach to Business Planning

Planning Your Trip

Imagine that you’re going to take the trip of a lifetime. You’ve got the time, you’ve got the money, and you’re finally going to realize that dream trip.

Would you enjoy planning that trip? Don’t you browse the web with relish, looking at hotel reviews, airline guides, destination websites, and whatever else you can find? Don’t you browse the bookstore for guidebooks and maps? Imagine yourself sitting with your travel companion in your living room stashed with books and maps and telephone and computer, planning that trip. It’s a good thought, right?

The heart of your plan is a combination of where you want to go, what you like to do, how, and with whom. The flesh and bones of your plan is a collection of concrete details: dates, flight numbers, hotel reservations, tour plans, and so on.

What would your travel plan look like? Where would you keep it? How would you share it?

You probably wouldn’t write your trip plan out as a formal document with a prescribed outline, table of contents, and appendices. You probably would keep it where you could get to it quickly as needed, whether that would be your phone, your laptop, or a collection of papers in your carry-on bag.

And you probably would work with your plan as you take the trip. For example, as you travel, things happen. Flights get cancelled or delayed. You miss connections. The article in the in-flight magazine recommends a hotel or a restaurant you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise. Hurricanes close airports. Hotels close for remodeling.

What do you do with your trip when things happen, and circumstances change? You change your plan, you revise your schedule, you plan as you go. You sit somewhere with your travel companions, and go back over guidebooks and schedules and possiblities, and revise accordingly. You don’t dump the core heart of your plan, but you might change the flesh and bones details.

You certainly wouldn’t just keep going just because that original plan said so, right? You wouldn’t try to fly into the hurricane or charter a plane to substitute for the one that was cancelled. You wouldn’t sneak into the hotel that was closed for remodeling. You wouldn’t ignore that great tip you got from the in-flight magazine.

When assumptions change, you don’t just run your head into a brick wall, because that’s what your plan said; you change your plan.

That’s where the title of this book comes from: you enjoy the plan as you build it, and you revise and correct and improve the plan as you go. Take some guidebooks and maps and a laptop along, so you can change things later. Listen to people you meet who offer new ideas. Expect to revise your plan as things happen and assumptions change.

Planning is part of the journey. It makes it better.

You might call that plan-as-you-go travel planning.

Planning Your Business

And I’m calling this new kind of business planning plan-as-you-go business planning. This is easier and far more practical than that large old-fashioned business plan you might imagine, and even fear, that you need.

My next chapter shows you how plan-as-you-go planning is different from the old-fashioned Business Plan that nobody uses. For now, here’s a quick summary:

• · It’s comes in integrated related pieces like blocks.
• · You can start anywhere and get going quickly. Jump from place to place.
• · You do only as much as you’re going to use. It’s planning for business’ sake, not for planning’s sake.
• · You can mix and match. Use what fits, ignore what doesn’t.
• · Like an artichoke, its built around a heart. The heart of the plan is a combination of market, identity, and focus.
• · Its flesh and bones are the concrete specifics, like dates, deadlines, milestones, budgets, and forecasts.
• · It’s a plan, not just a document. You don’t have to print it, but you can. You can also leave it on your computer.
• · It’s the source for the printed plan document, or the pitch presentation, or the elevator speech.
• · It leaves tracks so you can follow it back.
• · It assumes rapid change. It’s about managing change well.
• · It’s always there, always changing, always updated and refreshed, always ready to print as needed, but never finished.
• · It doesn’t have to be right to be useful. It helps you track where you were wrong and revise and review and correct. Like steering and walking, planning doesn’t hold the course when it’s better to correct the course.
• · It is concrete and measurable so you can track results and use it.
• · It never, never sits wasted and ignored in a drawer.

A Different Approach to What’s In a Book

Living in the Real World

This is 2008. I’m not pretending this book lives alone. As I write this I’m doing three blogs myself and three others as a guest expert. I’ve only recently stopped running a company that lives and breathes web traffic, download sales, conversion rates, page views, visitors, and Google analytics. I’m working with Microsoft office on four computers and on three different office subsitutes in the web world, where my documents live online and I visit them from whichever computer I’m on.

If you’re near a computer, go to www.timberry.com/thebook/ and you’ll see what that means to you. It’s a new world now, everything changes so quickly. Happily most of what I have to say lasts but there’s also constant updates, new ideas, tools, and of course new stuff on my blogs and associated websites. Join me there. That’s your portal to what else is happening in plan-as-you-go business planning.

I don’t expect this book to sit static on the shelf, I expect you to use it. And I don’t expect it to sit static as it is, I expect to update it constantly on the web, on my blogs, and as it flows through the world into other books, magazines, software, and so on.

The Blogs

From the portal page you’ll find links to other stuff: updates, online tools, templates, the proverbial latest and greatest. And I also hope you’ll check in and look for what’s going on at my regular posting places too:

Planning, Startups, Stories (http://blog.timberry.com), my first blog, sort of a flagship blog. That one gets a lot of my developing work on business planning, plus stories of real companies, including my own, mistakes, occasionally interesting videos, current events, and planning fundamentals.

Up and Running (http://upandrunning.entrepreneur.com), my blog on starting a business, hosted at entrepreneur.com. This one gets examples of actual startups, stories of startups, advice, new ideas, and links to other blogs and outside sources.

I’m also on some other blogs including the Business in General blog, Small Business Trends, and the Huffington Post.

Chapter updates

Please do check in at that portal page because I will be updating some chapters some times. After all, if we’re doing plan-as-you-go planning isn’t it also logical that we do write-as-you-go authorship? Things change, not just in your business, but also in the business of business planning.

Information sources

Links, resources, references that come up in this book can also change; once again, we’re living in the real world here, so we have to deal with change. I’ll keep you updated through the portal pages.

Software, Online Tools, etc.

You don’t need software to do plan-as-you-go business planning. This book is about the planning, how to do it, why, when, and how to work with the ideas, the people, the problems, the information, the decisions, and, of course, also the numbers. It isn’t about any particular software.

Planning doesn’t require any particular software. Plan-as-you-go planning is about results and management, not tools, so you can do it on the back of your hand as far as I’m concerned.

However, just in case you’re already asking yourself as you read this, I am also the principle author of Business Plan Pro, published by Palo Alto Software. I’m not going to talk about that in this book, but I can at least assure you that whatever I’m suggesting you do can be done within that software. And also, look for a coupon, there’s a deal available.

Finally, a related note about tools. I will refer to tools in some places where they are already up and running on the web and available to you at no charge. As with the software, you won’t need them to use this book, but they’ll be available to you; and, unlike the software, those tools are free. You’ll see them when they come along.

This is from my blog Up and Running, on Entrepreneur.com

If You Dread Planning Your Startup, Don’t Start It

Earlier today I had one of those light bulbs go off in my head. I’m referring to those times when you’re reminded of something you already knew, but had forgotten. In my case today it was this: planning your new business, the one you’re thinking of starting, ought to be fun. Planning isn’t about writing some ponderous homework assignment or dull business memo, it’s about that business that you want to create. It should be fascinating to you … what do people want, how are you going to give it to them, how are you different, what do you do better than anybody else …

Honestly, isn’t that related to the dreaming that makes some of us want to build our own businesses? It was for me, every time, including those that made it and those that failed. Dreaming about the next thing I wanted to do was always part of it. Dreaming is related to looking forward, anticipating, and — in this case — business planning.

This came up this morning during my second day of video sessions for SBTV, which has been filming me on starting and managing a business, and business planning. I was answering Beth Haselhorst’s question relating starting a business to getting out of the cubicle when I realized that I was in danger of forgetting that business planning is part of the dreaming and part of the fun.

I think what’s important is that none of us should be intimidated by business planning because of what I’ve called the not so big business plan, or the point I made in this blog last month about starting anywhere you like. The business plan is a way to lay out your thoughts and think it through — it shouldn’t be some dull ponderous task you have to get through.

If thinking through the core elements of your business, or for that matter the details of your business, isn’t interesting, then get a clue. You’re not really looking forward to it. Do you not want to do it?

Remember, you don’t have to do the whole plan all at once. One of the most common and damaging myths about planning is that you are supposed to work only on your business plan until you finish that plan. To the contrary, you should be enjoying thinking about the market, what you do well, how you want to focus, what sales might be, what costs might be, and so forth; and you should be writing some of that down, simple and without a lot of intimidation, just write it down and save it and then do something else. You start your plan wherever you want to, and you start using it the next day, and you don’t worry about exactly when it is formally done, because it never will be. Just get going, but enjoy the thinking and planning while you do.

If you dread the planning of your next vacation, stay home. If you dread the planning of your new startup, don’t start it.