Why Write a One-Page Strategic Plan?

I have met founders who seem terrified of planning. This is often in the beginning, in Phases 1 or 2. The business is all upside down at this early point in the journey. And most entrepreneurs hate shutting down opportunities. They generally thrill on seizing them, even randomly. This is the dopamine rush of being a founder and pouncing on a sudden chance to double the business. And there are a whole lot of ways to fold a $100,000 business. A sh*t ton. 

The problem is that many, even most, of those opportunities to double a tiny startup are NOT strategically valuable, send valuable inventory into low-velocity dead zones, and create the false impression of growth, which, ultimately, is not being led by rabid fandom. 

The primary reason to create a one-page plan for at least the next financial year is that it keeps you accountable to an objective revenue number. When you don’t hit it, you can’t re-interpret the number and spin it. You missed. This forces you and your team to ask why and delve into why. 

Plans force you to diagnose your performance objectively. That’s the primary benefit. The master benefit, so to speak. 

If your plan only accomplishes this, I promise you will outperform the average $100,000 revenue peer who is literally just throwing tactics at a wall, chasing POs, and otherwise winging it on energy drinks and wildly premature podcast interviews about ‘their journey’(!) 

Join me on Friday, January 27th, for my Q1 – Riding the Ramp training for Founders new to the CPG industry. This is about the components of a plan for exponential growth using the principles outlined in my book. Two hours. Jump on this ‘random’ opportunity.

Jan Udlock

[email protected]