Getting to Plan B — Breaking through to a better business model.
Sometimes the mere title of a book can be enlightening. Yes! That's where we're at, I thought. I feel stuck. So when I saw this on Ed's desk I grabbed it and asked to borrow it. Somewhat alarmed, my entrepreneur friend agreed after I promised to return it in 24 hours.
So in between entertaining guests and other real life activities I skim read Getting to Plan B by John Mullins and Randy Komisar. By the time I'd finished, I was out of that nasty stuckness, happily hypothesizing about a leap of faith, and doing arithmetic. Ideas about our own Plan B (or rather Plan F) for Contented effervesced, coalesced and started making sense.
It's funny how entrepreneurs read this type of business development book (or at least I do). Both Ed and I skim-read and cherry-picked. I could feel my eyes wandering over the page and my mind zipping off on its own direction, relating concepts to my own experiences and businesses I am familiar with. Most of the time I wasn't really reading at all: I was just looking, seeing the odd sentence, and thinking my own thoughts.
This is certainly not a negative comment on Getting to Plan B. It's just a fact of life for active business entrepreneurs reading business books.
Every business is different, and I assume everyone will seize a personal insight from this book. Here are a few possibilities: do any of them match your experience?
- A stupid person is one who keeps doing something that doesn't work. Uh-oh: that's me.
- Our sacred business plan is counterproductive: it locks us into Plan A, which is failing.
- We have a fine sales model for our initial product but we need a new model for resales and new products.
- It's better to seek investment finance later than sooner, and stupid to seek it on the basis of an untested idea.
- Hm, so profit is irrelevant compared with cash flow for our particular business.
- The moment you get investment finance is the moment you agree to sell your business (later).
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