The Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan for Entrepreneurship

An interview with business-planning guru Tim Berry

When Trump University was searching for the best business plan software to integrate into our Entrepreneurship Mastery Program, we found a blockbuster program in Business Plan Pro. Little did we know that it was the brainchild of a business-planning guru named Tim Berry - a man who has spent nearly three decades helping successful entrepreneurs bring their dreams to life.

So if you are scared of writing a business plan, worry no more. That will all change when you read this conversation between Tim and Trump U’s Executive Editor Barry Lenson . . .

Barry Lenson: Why do people get paralyzed at the thought of writing a business plan?

Tim Berry: When I think about writing a business plan, I resist too. I feel like I need to drink a pot of coffee just to get started. But when I think about planning my business, I get charged up. I want to think about my business! I love my business! I want to control my destiny! I want to do that!

And the difference between “Oh no, I gotta do a business plan!” and “Wow, I want to plan my business better!” is an approach I call “The Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan.”

BL: Why use that name?

TB: Because planning a business is not a sequential thing. It isn’t a series of hurdles to jump over.

Planning a business is like planning a trip. You can’t expect all the plans you make ahead of time to be set in stone, because things change. Let’s say that you planned a trip last month, and that next week you are supposed to fly to Miami. Only a hurricane is about to strike Florida. So of course you’d be foolish to fly there, just because you don’t want to change your plans.

But when planning their businesses, people often make plans ahead of time and stick to them, even when it makes no sense any more. Sometimes people don’t stop to realize that the business plan they wrote two months ago is no longer working, no longer showing them where they need to go. When things change, you have to wake up and change too.

So that’s the mindset. You’re excited. You’re planning. You don’t just have a plan and follow it, no matter what changes take place.

BL: But you have to start somewhere. Where do you jump in?

TB: The first important thing is to not get trapped into somebody else’s defined sequence. You start anywhere, knowing at the start that the planning is like working with a collection of blocks that will come together into a structure over time, and that the plan will never be finished. The first block you pick up is the one that excites you the most.

That block is different for everyone. I’ve worked with people who wanted to start their business planning by getting onto a spreadsheet - maybe thinking through what they could sell in terms of units, unit price, units per month. On the other end of the equation, I’ve worked with people who needed to do their mission statements first, because otherwise they wouldn’t feel right. And then other people have focused on wider, higher concepts like, “How am I different in the market? What are my people really buying? Who are my real customers? How am I different - what is my core competency?”

If your planning works right, you pick up the block that appeals to you first and get moving. But you also have to avoid the idea that doing a business plan is something that you do once, in the time between thinking about the business and starting the business - and then you stop. You’re always doing the business plan!

BL: So you get started where you want and then jump to the next block?

TB: Yes, but realize that no block will ever be finished. Your sales forecast is going to change every month. Your marketing objectives will change.

BL: You said that getting trapped in somebody else’s plan is not a good idea. But you might need help, right?

TB: Right, You need people who can provide real, valuable feedback. But most of the help should come from the people who are going to share in the implementation of the plan. To go back to the trip analogy, you can’t be the only person to plan a journey that three people are going to make with you. That’s deadly, yet a lot of people have made that mistake. The founder or owner makes a plan and expects everyone in his organization to adhere to it. You need the planning help of the people who are with you.

BL: And doing a plan electronically helps, of course, because of the flexibility. Since you are the developer of Business Plan Pro, can you offer some objective advice on the best programs to use?

TB: I think that biases should be stated ahead of time. I am biased! I am proud of Business Plan Pro. I have put a lifetime of experience into the product. It is an ideal tool if you use it in a way that respects your own thinking - you only let it manage the mechanics for you.

The flexibility, plan-as-you-go approach is critical. Because I’ll tell you, I writhe in anguish when I see people who just use the program to create a business plan, and then walk away and stop planning.

You are on a computer, after all. You’ve got navigation. You can move from block to block. You can say, “I am tired of working on the mission statement right now, so I will go to the sales forecast. Oops, the sales forecast just told me that I need more cash, so I will now jump to cash.”

Business Plan Pro, if well used, lets you do exactly that. I like to think of it as a modern version of one of those old loose-leaf folders where you can pull pages out, insert new ones - do whatever you need to do. But of course it does things that a notebook could never do. You can transfer your data over into a PowerPoint, for example, or print out different documents for your team.

But the beauty of the computer is that things keep changing as you do your Plan-As-You-Go Plan. Your business plan will evolve into something remarkable - a vision that is a reflection of you, your business and your dream.

Editor's note: We will be featuring more of Tim Berry's advice in future posts. But if you'd like to absorb  more of his wisdom immediately, please visit his two blogs: Planning Startups Stories and Up and Running.