Entrepreneurship

Escorting Execution

After a few early moves, developing a business plan is a hearty exercise. Business plans are less pivotal than scholars may preach, but developing a business plan does force you to pick through the specifics of any business. The detailed planning can pave a path toward sustainability and help you articulate opportunities to potential co-founders, new hires, outsourced talent, investors, and early adopters.

The first version of a business plan does not need to be long, but it should include a handful of key elements:

    1. Executive Summary
    2. Company Description
    3. Market Analysis
    4. Products & Services
    5. Marketing & Sales
    6. Operations
    7. Financials
    8. Appendix

One size does not fit all, and earlier moves like canvasing and wireframing will lighten the load as you flesh out details. To determine how particularized your business plan needs to be, consider who will be reviewing this dynamic document. Learn more and explore different templates online, then craft something you’re proud of.

Even without an audience, creating a business plan is rarely a waste of time. They can also become a required asset when you’re raising financial capital. Situations where you’ll likely need a business plan include grant applications, bank loans, and pitch competitions. Entrepreneurial support organizations (ESOs) may request a business plan to warrant professional services as well.

As you build a business plan, use clarifying frameworks, concise content, and mark areas that may need to more frequent updates. This makes the document interesting, more digestible, and easier to maintain.

As you update this dynamic document, consider how your business plan supports other related resources that collectively paint the picture of your company. Sharp business plans integrate with a cool one-pager, slide decks that ignite verbal presentations, a pitch deck with similar content brought to life with enhanced visuals, and ongoing investor updates. This shapes a forwardable investor pack geared to keep your ideas from slipping toward someday.

Brewed From Within
#10 📖 Entrepreneurship

By Ben McDougal, ago

Wireframing

Technology is known for expanding the reach of an idea, but plenty of leaders are not tech savvy.

One common scenario is a concept from someone with industry experience but no ability to code. If an idea has technical components, it’s advantageous to be technical, but this often makes first-time founders feel like there’s nothing they can do without paying for development or immediately recruiting co-founders to help build the product. This locks the idea in limbo, when in fact, there are many methods to make purposeful progress without a line of code.

Tools to make progress without being a developer are absolutely accessible, but knowing what direction to take is time-consuming. Decisions will be needed, but if doubt lingers, one easy way to think through your ideas is to visualize each step of the user experience.

Wireframing is an exercise that requires only a pencil, paper, and time. This activity is thought-provoking and allows anyone to conceptualize the structure and flow of their idea. It helps identify each type of user and user experience (UX) with no tech required.

To start, find a wireframing template to draw everything on screens of the device(s) your product will be used on. For example, if it’s a mobile app, find a wireframing template that includes blank smartphone screens and space for notes (example) to describe each state and how everything connects within the user interface (UI).Wireframing is used mostly to conceptualize digital products, but sketches help jumpstart physical products as well. If it’s a physical product, test your drawing skills by highlighting how different elements collectively come together to form the final embodiment. If it’s a storefront, determine the ideal space by sketching how customers move within it. If it’s a network of parts, draw how the system comes together.

Along with clarifying concepts for yourself, wireframing makes it easier for others to follow how everything fits together. Time spent here saves money if development is eventually outsourced because it curates a roadmap to avoid costly detours. When building a team, wireframes show you’re serious. This visual asset helps to explain the angles and makes it easier for others to contribute.

While product design and the business to support it will need to advance, earnest wireframing helps idea machines dodge melting momentum. Remain willing to learn but consider using this early move to help avoid paralysis by getting crafty as less technology brings more ideas to life.

Brewed From Within
#70 📖 Technology

By Ben McDougal, ago

Melting Momentum

Once something melts, it’s never quite the same.

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Inspiration is perishable.

From the moment we decide to start building an idea into reality, the force required is geared toward finding and then maintaining momentum.

Meaningful momentum is awakened in endless ways. Early momentum might mean showing up at an event for the first time, researching the competitive landscape, testing an early hypothesis, leaning into customer discovery, recruiting potential co-founders, building product, and eventually activating a launch sequence. Once a project is launched, the need for momentum never fades. If anything, it only becomes more important. There are many more examples, but growing the business, achieving milestones, and celebrating progress are all forms of valuable momentum. Even in later stages of a company, momentum drives activities like succession planning, navigating a successful exit, and considering how your human, financial, cultural, intellectual, and network capital can be recycled back into the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

No matter where you’re at in your own journey, if momentum is maintained long enough, the result can be a flywheel effect that feeds on itself. Anything you want to grow will always require endless work, but with less friction, momentum delivers more time, understandings, and space for different activities emerge.

On the flip side, if momentum is melting, it’s difficult to recapture. These are moments to consider when and what to quit. If there’s enough energy to keep writing the story, it’s neat how there’s always the option to keep building. A few sparks that can help regain momentum come to mind. For instance, (re)connecting with the startup community, learning something new, saying “yes” to unlock adventure, saying “no” to create space, travel, revisiting customer discovery, building a new feature, considering a pivot, onboarding new customers, and adding to the team.

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Need help regaining momentum?

The longer stagnancy lingers, the harder it will be to realign momentum. Tactics to maintain a creative state of kamiwaza, even when momentum is melting, starts with communication. Keeping honest communication consistent adds clarity and is the easiest way to appreciate the realities of slowness. Reducing the weird by exposing the why, also keeps different stakeholders on the same page, even during more lethargic times. By reducing the tension that quietly brews in silence, teams may be able to run at lower speeds. If left unattended, this can devolve into a lack of urgency that brings new challenges, but at a lower speed, perhaps less movement is needed to regain/retain the sense of shared momentum.

When we play long-term games with long-term people, momentum is crucial, but set your own pace by exploring the type of momentum you need at different stages within the work. This awareness helps you quit chasing momentum and sets us free to forge better art, at a sustainable speed. This helps us multiply mass and velocity, which equates to momentum when, where, and how it’s needed to keep building.

By Ben McDougal, ago

Not to Lose

Whether it was traveling with the teams my dad coached as a kid, playing club soccer at an early age, monopolizing my time in high school, playing all through college, or being the focus of my first entrepreneurial venture, soccer was a part of my identity for over 20 years. I’ve since shifted toward the more secret exercise of golf, but memories remain, and sports have so many playful metaphors.

Sports and other organized activities help us push to be our best, and the sense of belonging is the real magic.

No matter the sport, it can be easy to get ahead before slipping into a dangerous trap. Instead of staying sharp by maintaining the offensive pressure that earned an early advantage, it’s natural to start playing not to lose.

In soccer, this often means a team sinks back into an overly defensive formation. Less variety invites frantic desperation, and the added pressure often leads to the opposing squad scoring an equalizing goal. Even if the need for another goal shifts your team back into a more balanced attack, the momentum has shifted.

When applied to business, getting ahead and then playing not to lose can be seen all over the map. For instance, snagging a few early adopters, then assuming customer discovery is over. Hiring new talent, then just hoping everyone can work together. Launching a new product with existing customers, then not supporting them through the chasm of change. Securing product-market fit, then avoiding innovation due to a misguided sense of risk. Finding generous mentors, then forgetting to nurture relationships. Those are just a few ways we get ahead, then play to lose, but many leaders are lulled into this trap.

Tactics to stay ahead differ based on situational factors, but when in doubt, trust that uncertainty is certain. Be strategic to avoid recklessness, then maintain pressure and stay on the offensive by leaning into the pain.

As you find fresh ways to serve customers, continue celebrating milestones and stay ahead with more initiative to keep playing beyond the fear of losing.

Brewed From Within
#30 📖 Entrepreneurship

By Ben McDougal, ago

Intrinsic

We all have bad days. When they string together, the stress gets heavy. This mental weight becomes especially unwieldy when the cause is unclear. If down days stack up, searching for the origin can lead to liberating awareness.

This is not a simple pursuit. Emotions are transient, external factors remain in flux, and the labyrinth of life is winding. General therapy is helpful, but well-being within the entrepreneurial lifestyle is a moving target.

To start, destigmatize the circuitry between leadership and mental health. Be content knowing it’s not always rainbows and unicorns. This is a lonely rollercoaster with highs and lows at every turn. Recognizing this helps us appreciate the impermanence of emotions.

Leaders thrive on being exposed to new things, interesting problems, stories from different people, and building into whatever we care about. When there’s a lull in the action, it’s easy to think the ride is over. While this thought may be misguided, it’s disheartening and can lead to an isolating absence of joy. Identifying intrinsic motivations help leaders navigate and go beyond temporary despair.

As the highs of a milestone moment start to fade, be honest with your situation and don’t shy away from what got you there. Intrinsic motivators—like the love for family, fun with friends, helping others, thinking big, physical activity, and perceptual learning—guide us back to peace and happiness.

Along with internal observations, lean on peers who understand the realities of an entrepreneurial lifestyle. Welcome sincere conversations loaded with listening, and you’ll soon have others wanting to help you in return.

Here are a few more effective ways inquisitive leaders can actively maintain their mental fitness:

  • Try new things.
  • Reconnect with nature.
  • Travel to expand the mind.
  • Link teaching with learning.
  • Create more than you consume.
  • Stay centered with physical/mental exercise.
  • Avoid isolation; don’t be afraid to ask for help.

    Strength does not come from ignoring pain. Within the crucible of an entrepreneurial lifestyle, hardship is inevitable, but storms will pass and self-inquiry keeps leaders aware of their own fortitude. This reveals more stepping stones that illuminate fresh motivation to help leaders transcend momentary setbacks.

    Brewed From Within
    #121 📖 Life & Happiness

    By Ben McDougal, ago