I Didn't Need Another Business Plan

How will it make money?
What will it cost to run?
Where do I want it to be in three years?
How do I make sure it's sustainable?

All the questions you'd expect when building a business.

So I sat down with ChatGPT and started working through them.
But somewhere along the way, something changed.
I realised I didn't need another business plan.
Or, at least, I didn't need only a business plan.
The numbers weren't enough

I've been in business before.
I've experienced success. I've made mistakes. I've spent money I probably shouldn't have spent. I've followed ideas because they excited me. I've learned what I'm good at and, perhaps more importantly, where I need something—or someone—to challenge me.
None of that really appears on a traditional spreadsheet.
A business plan might tell me where the revenue should come from, what the costs are and what growth could look like.

But it doesn't necessarily ask:

What happens when the founder gets excited by another new idea?

That's quite an important question when the founder is me.
So our conversation started going deeper.
Instead of only asking what should this business do?, I started asking:

How should this business behave?
And:
How should I behave while building it?
Building the lessons in
That changed everything.

We started looking at the businesses I've built before.
Not to dwell on what went wrong, but to make sure the lessons weren't wasted.

What worked?
What didn't?
Where did I make good decisions?
Where did I move too quickly?
What do I want to do differently this time?
What responsibilities does this company have to the people around me, including my family?
And perhaps most importantly:
What kind of company do I actually want to build?

Slowly, the business plan started becoming something else.
We began calling it The Blueprint.
A living, breathing business plan
The Blueprint still contains the things a business needs.

Vision.
Purpose.
Customers.
Revenue.
Costs.
Growth.
Risk.

But alongside those things are the principles that should guide the decisions we make.
When a new idea comes along, I want the business to be able to ask:

Does this genuinely belong?
When I'm tempted to add another feature:
Are we making this more complicated than it needs to be?
When I want to move quickly:
Do we need to do this now?
When an opportunity appears:
Does it serve the mission, or are we simply chasing growth?
And when spending money:
Can the business genuinely afford this without asking my family to carry the risk?
That's very different from a document sitting in a folder that gets opened once a year.

I want this Blueprint to live alongside the company.
To change as we learn.
To challenge me when necessary.
And occasionally, perhaps, to protect the company from me.

I'm 58
There's something else I've been thinking about this week.
I'm 58.
When you're building something new, it's easy to use language like starting again.
But I'm not starting again.
I'm bringing everything with me.
The businesses.
The successes.
The mistakes.
The people I've worked with.
The conversations I've had.
The years in media.
The journey into coaching.
The things I've learned about myself.
Even the decisions I wish I'd made differently.
They're all part of what I'm building now.
And perhaps that's one of the gifts of getting older.
You don't have to pretend the previous chapters didn't happen.
You get to use them.

So, no, I didn't end up with another conventional business plan this week.
I ended up with something I think is much more valuable.
A living Blueprint for the company I'm trying to build—and a reminder of the person I want to be while building it.

At 58, I'm not starting again.

I'm starting with experience.

Until next week,

Stefan

Your Life. Your Call.