The Business Plan is Dead: Why Every Founder Needs a Living Blueprint (Not a Dusty Document)
The Business Plan is Dead: Why Every Founder Needs a Living Blueprint (Not a Dusty Document)
Look, I’m known as the messy founder. I’ve got post-it notes everywhere and a million ideas buzzing. And when I hear people talk about business plans, honestly, I think, “Oh God, business plan.” Why? Because I don’t have one, and that’s fine. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a plan for the business.
A traditional business plan is crucial for funding and grants, because “quite rightly, they’re saying, ‘Well, tell me where that money’s going.’” It’s a great reality check to prove your idea “is viable. It’s got legs, there’s meat on the bone.”
The problem? “The average lifespan of a business plan is three months. And I would say that that’s very generous.” If you do it once, “shove it on the shelf, never look at it again,” it’s useless. That’s why we need a Blueprint.
The Blueprint: Anchored in Your Ambition
A business plan is a formal document created at a set point in time. A Blueprint is a “system you use every day,” something “agile, evolves with you,” and, crucially, is “anchored in your personal ambition.”
1. The Founder First Principle
You cannot separate the business from the founder. “If you’re having a bad day, the business is having a bad day.” We need to protect the leader.
The Payoff: What do you actually want? Money is the vehicle, but what does it unlock? Flexibility? Freedom? Financial security? The scenario I see play out constantly is people building a business that “saps the life out of them” instead of giving them the freedom they wanted.
Boundaries are Strategy: We need to be “really honest with yourself about what actually motivates you” and set clear boundaries. “If you burn yourself out, the business stops.” We need to work out what hats to part with, and which ones to put on.
2. The Foundation: Crystal Clear Identity
Your business identity must be so clear that your customer knows why to choose you over anyone else.
The USP Dilemma: If you’re a service provider, and the thing that makes you unique is you, you have a conscious decision to make: Are you building a freelancer job or a scalable business? If your business can’t run if you took yourself out of it, you’re a freelancer.
The Expensive Hobby: “If you don’t understand, you’ve got no product, you just got a really expensive hobby.” You have to get under your customer’s skin.
Be Brave, Niche Down: Trying to target everyone is a massive pitfall. You have to be brave in working out who you’re targeting. As you refine your audience, “you’ll get braver and braver, and your target will get smaller and smaller.” And suddenly, people will find you because you’re the no-brainer choice.
3. The Roadmap: Strategy on a Page
Your Blueprint needs a strong, simple strategy that “fits in the page.”
Be Curious, Not Complacent: “Curiosity is like dipping off as AI is going up.” Use tools like AI for data gathering and competitive analysis, but make your own informed decisions. You need to be “as curious as you can possibly be” to proactively create distance from your competitors.
Anticipate the Threats: It is not sexy, but you need to “keep on top of your risks.” What would you do if a competitor opened up next door at half the price? Thinking about these scenarios now is how you stay ahead.
4. Delivery: The Agile Shift
This is about focusing your energy and getting the work done with intent.
Fail Fast, Iterate Constantly: We need to move into an Agile space. Stop building for six months. Instead, think: “What can I do in the next two weeks? I’m going to put it out there, I’m going to test it, I’m going to tweak it a bit.”
Reframing is Everything: When something doesn’t work, it feels personal—like “opening a shop and no one turns up.” But the key is “reframing that in your head to iterations feels less personal.” It’s not failure, it is just learning.
By building your Blueprint right, you are continuously making decisions that align with your deepest goals, and you will always have that snapshot ready if someone asks for a business plan.