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 twelve minute slide presentation summarizing the key points in Chapter 2, ‘Attitude Adjustment.’

If for any reason you don’t see the youtube video player in this post, you can also click here to go to the source on youtube directly.

Where’s my discussion of the secret sauce? Chelle Parmele from the BIG (business in general) blog asked me that a couple days ago, expecting it to be in this book. I was embarrassed. I talk about the secret sauce a lot, in my seminars and in my class, at the office. It’s definitively another view of the same reality I’m calling the heart of the plan. So that’s one thing to add for the next edition.

The secret sauce is the magic, also called (boring) differentiators, and sometimes competitive edge; Guy Kawasaki calls it “underlying magic” and recommends that it be one of the 10 (or so) slides is a pitch presentation. You can google it and see how people are writing about it, using it to define what’s new or different about some businesses. (You’ll also see some items on McDonalds’ secret sauce for the big mac, and some cooking stuff, but you’ll see what I mean).

This idea of the secret sauce is a good way to explain how you’re different from your competitors. What sets you apart?

Examples? Apple Computer’s secret sauce is design, for example. Michelin tires’ branding tries (in my opinion) to emulate Volve, the safety angle. My favorite restaurant in Eugene, Poppi’s Anatolia, has an extremely spicy version of vindaloo chicken. Whole Foods’ secret sauce is its having established the brand for healthy and organic foods. In cars, just look at the mini-cooper or the Honda Element or the Toyota Prius and you see secret sauce immediately.

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.

A tip of the hat to the team at Entrepreneur Press, because the book was barely finished in May and it’s already available now — July 25 as I write this, but it’s been a couple of weeks.  You can order it now at amazon.com, it should be on the shelves at Barnes & Noble stores and is available online at the Barnes & Noble website; and you can order it online at Borders. From what I’ve been told about orders, you’re likely to find it at the Barnes and Noble stores, but not so much at Borders stores — although it’s available online at all three places.

You should be surprised that I’m writing this forward 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

Planning is good. You may not need a full formal business plan, but you can certainly use planning to manage. So I’ve written this book to help you get going quickly, and easily, with only as much planning as you want and need to succeed. That might require a full plan, and it might not.

In an old Peanuts comic strip, Charlie Brown and Lucy are walking on a sidewalk when they see in front of them something that Lucy — who knows everything — identifies as a rare Brazilian butterfly. She starts talking about the wonder of the butterfly having traveled all the way from Brazil, when Charlie Brown looks closer and interrupts: “It’s a potato chip.”

“Then isn’t it even more amazing,” Lucy continues, without missing a beat, “that this potato chip got here all the way from Brazil?”

This story reminds me of what’s happening to business planning. People who mean to say what I’m saying with this book, that not every business needs a complete formal business plan, end up missing out on planning. And that’s a shame.

So I say let’s keep it simple and practical. Do as much planning as you’ll be able to use. Realize that all plans will change, so think of your plan as ongoing and use it to guide your business. Expect it to change, but use the planning to keep your eyes on the long-term goals even as the details change. It’s like planning a trip, for example:having the plan doesn’t lock you in, it helps you keep track and revise as needed. Or like dribbling: you keep your eyes on the whole field (or court) while you deal with the ball, watching the play develop without losing track of the goal. Plan as you go.

This is a new approach to business planning. It’s new and different because it takes what’s most important about the traditional business plan idea and applies it better to today’s world. And it’s a lot better than the traditional business plan, quicker, easier, more flexible, more practical, and more useful.

It’s been a long time coming. I’ve been working with business plans for about 30 years now. Startup plans for new companies that didn’t yet exist, growth plans, strategic plans, action plans, feasibility plans, lots of plans. One of my startup plans became Borland International, which went public less than four years after it started, and made me a lot of money. I did annual plans for Apple Latin America, then Apple Pacific, and then Apple Japan for a combined total of 12 years. I’ve used business planning to grow my own company to 40 employees and 70 percent market share without outside investment.

Through all of these years, I’ve seen how business planning can be the secret of success for new companies and growing companies. I’ve seen how the best companies understand planning and regularly develop plans and manage them. Good companies plan.

I’ve also seen how myths and misunderstandings get in the way. People think — wrongly — that having a plan means getting locked into doing something that doesn’t make sense, mindlessly, because it’s in the plan. People think –wrongly — that rapid changes make planning less useful, when in fact good planning is one of the best ways to manage change. People think — and this is one of the most damaging misconceptions — that a business plan is hard to do and set in stone with a long list of necessary parts, a ponderous and pompous formal exercise.

The plan-as-you-go business plan is what you need and only what you need. It can be as simple as a 60-second strategy summary that can be delivered in an elevator. For smaller companies it might be that plus a review schedule, milestones table, measurement notes, and a sales forecast. And as companies grow, their plans can grow. Then, when you need the big plan document, you add the additional parts you need and create the document. But you are always planning, and you are never without a plan.

This is not the first business plan book I’ve done. Unfortunately, I now hate the title of my last business plan book, the most successful, because it sets up exactly the wrong idea: the business plan as hurdle. The book was titled Hurdle: the Book on Business Planning. What’s wrong with this is that business planning isn’t supposed to be like a hurdle that stands in the way; instead, it’s a powerful tool for managing your company better, controlling your business destiny, establishing accountability, and developing teamwork. You should never think of it as a hurdle. It’s not an obstacle you overcome; it’s a technique that helps you manage your company better.

So don’t stop working. Don’t ever let the business plan stand between you and doing business. Get started, get going, and make the plan useful to you from the very first day.

You’ll find that strategy in this book. I want you to get started. I expect that you’ll be able to do something today that will already be helping your business tomorrow.

I understand. Enough of the explanations and positioning, let’s get working on a plan. So go ahead, just jump in and do it.

• Most people like to start with the heart of the plan. Jump there now, you’ll see what I mean. It’s about what really drives your business. Your target market, your business offering, your strategic focus. And don’t worry about format; write it, speak it, use bullet points, slides, or whatever.
• My personal favorite is the plan review schedule. This makes it very clear that you’re after planning, and better management, not just a plan.
• Another very good starting point is the sales forecast. Some people like to get to the numbers first, and many people do the conceptual thinking while they work the numbers. Your target market, your business offering, your strategic focus are all in your head as you make your sales forecast. That’s not a bad way to proceed.
• Maybe you want to start with an expense budget instead. Estimate your payroll on an average month. Calculate your burn rate, a very important number, meaning how much money you have to spend per month.
• If you’re planning to start a business, startup costs is a good place to get going. Make lists of what you need, in money, goods, locations, and so forth.
• Particularly when you have a team, SWOT (strengths, weaknessess, opportunities, and threats) analysis is a great way to start. You can jump to the SWOT analysis now and do that.
• Some people like to set the scene better, with the mission statement, vision, mantra, objectives, or keys to success. That gives your plan a framework to live in. If you like.

However, there are some things in business planning, even plan-as-you-go planning, that have to happen in a certain order. For example, you can’t really just start with the cash flow statement without having done your sales forecast, burn rate, and some asset and liabilities assumptions.

Still, you can get started fast. I don’t blame you. Maybe you’ll jump back here (use your Back button) to continue the explanations after you’ve made some progress.

A Live Book: Web Links

Some things change more often than a book is printed, so I keep the content alive and refreshed on the web. You’ve got the book as a guide, but let’s optimize.

This is the 21st century. I’m not pretending this book lives alone. As I wrote this I was working three blogs myself and contributing to three others as a guest expert. I only recently stopped running a company that lives and breathes web traffic, download sales, conversion rates, page views, visitors, and Google analytics. I was working with Microsoft Office on four computers and on three different office substitutes in the web world, where my documents live online, and I visit them from whichever computer I’m on.

Of course you get that, you’re here with me now on the website, so you can see what that means to you. It’s a new world now; everything changes so quickly. Happily, most of what I have to say will last but there also will be updates, new ideas, tools, and of course new stuff on my blogs and associated websites. That’s why you’re here. This is 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.

Chapter updates

Please do check in here occasionally because I will be updating some chapters from time to time. 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, and references that come up in the 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 this site.

The plan-as-you-go business plan isn’t big on supporting information that slows down your process, but it is required in some cases, so I’ve set up the links to update information sources, such as market research pages, industry information, and standard financials, as they become out of date.

Software Optional, Not Required

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 special computer programs. 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.

By the way, I am also the principle author of the software Business Plan Pro, published by Palo Alto Software. I’m not going to talk much 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, if you do end up buying the book, look inside it for a deal worth $20 off the price of the Business Plan Pro purchase.

Quick Action

Jump around. This book is written with that in mind. It’s not all sequential. If you want to get going immediately, do so. (I hope you saw the sidebar in the previous section.)

I don’t expect you to read this book from the first page to the last page. I’m not writing it that way and I don’t think you’d want to read it that way. This book is about your business, and when you think about your business, your thoughts jump. You go from sales forecast to some new slant on your strategy. One thing reminds you of another.

Please read the chapters in whatever order makes sense to you. I have put links and page references all over the book. Let a thought in one place take you to a different thought in a different place. That’s what’s supposed to happen.

To help you decide where to go when, I’ve tried to make the chapter titles and headings maps to the main points in the book.

Jumping Subjects

In his excellent book Meatball Sundae (Portfolio, 2007), Seth Godin points out the growing trend of shorter content, quick jumps of attention, as part of the world we now live in. Instant gratification. Keep it short, like blog posts. You don’t want to sit through a long lecture.

Business planning is a lot like that too. You can expect a lot of short subjects. Stories. Sidebars. I want to help you think about your business, what’s important, how to do it better. Planning isn’t sequential. Thinking comes in short bursts.

The Blogs

From the portal page, you’ll find links to other resources: 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 blog includes examples of actual startups, stories of startups, advice, new ideas, and links to other blogs and outside sources.

I also contribute to some other blogs including the Business in General (http://businessingeneral.com) blog, Small Business Trends (http://www.smallbiztrends.com), and the Huffington Post (http//www.huffingtonpost.com).