This morning we continue with our series. The point we are going to discuss today is dicey so be ready!
Before I move forward to elucidating this point, let me clarify something first.
I am sure you may be asking , "isn't planning a very important starting point of everything?"
Well, I'll give it to you! Yes, planning is a vital part of every successful life and when you fail to plan, its a plan to failure.
However, there is a thin line between adequate planning and procrastination. The line is so thin that you may never know when you fall out of one into the other.
I remember in 2014 when I was drawing up a business plan for a youth enterprise support fund. I was so engrossed in making a perfect plan with hope that anyone on seeing it will be ready to invest in. I spent hours of work on it each day, making sure every price of an item I kept in there was verified. Even though they had their specifications for the business plan, I was already thinking in case I was not selected I could use the plan to search for funding.
At the end, I was not selected and even my quest to use it as a bargaining chip for funding failed woefully.
One day an investor told me that I spent too much time on my business plan and he simply did not believe I had the grit for business then. In his experience he had said that most people who spend so much time planning are not great executors. He explained further that my hopes were so much in the assumptions I had kept into the planning and if those assumptions were to be wrong, my passion will come down and the business might collapse even before it started. He then told me to go and work on myself and when I am ready I should contact him again.
In 2014 I was in level 200 at the University at the age of 19. Honestly, I had not had any experience with business of any kind so I really believed so strongly that my plan was perfect. Fast forward to today, the plan is still just a bunch of numbers in a document resting in my computer and nothing has been done about it.
In 2016, when I started earning some allowance from my internship a friend told me about farming, I didn't spend up to a day planning how I was going to enter, I just asked some questions for clarifications, made sure I understood the risks involved and I delved in. Just within a year I have expanded by 230% my operations. I have no business plan for the farm yet, I will only write one when I want to expand even further.
This instance alone thought me that sometimes a perfect plan is not necessary. In fact, there is nothing like a perfect plan because every plan is based on assumptions and any assumption may turn up not to be true.
I watched Mark Zukerberg's speech during his PhD award at Havard, he had said that when he launched Facebook, he was so happy that he was connecting people in the university community but he was sure one day someone will connect the world.
This tells you that he had no plan that covered everything but when the opportunity showed up, he grabbed it.
When you spend all time planning, you will hardly act. It is important to know your market, know your pricing strategy and all that but you need to draw the line.... When you have an idea speed is important. Knowing your markets is not about writing down documents, it is about speaking to people in that line and understanding it yourself and bam! you are good to go!
Plan, but don't wait till you connect all the dots, you can't see the future, jump in and have a go! Thanks for your attention and see you at the very top.
