Why, Who, What, Where, and When: A Business Plan That Actually Gets Used

Why, Who, What, Where, and When: A Business Plan That Actually Gets Used

Most business plan advice falls into one of two categories.

The first is the traditional business plan, a dense, jargon-heavy document written for a bank or investor audience that takes weeks to produce, bears little resemblance to how your business will actually operate, and lives in a folder on your desktop until you forget it exists.

The second is the “just start” school of thought, which tells you that planning is overthinking and the only way to learn is to launch. This advice is free, widely available, and responsible for a significant percentage of first-year business failures.

Both are wrong for the same reason. They treat the business plan as either a bureaucratic requirement or an obstacle to action, when it is actually the most useful tool you have for making decisions before those decisions cost you money.

This course is built around a different framework. Five questions. Five modules. The same ones journalists have used for a century to get to the truth of any story.

Why are you building this and will that reason survive the hard parts? Who are you building it for and who are you building against? What exactly are you selling, how does the money move, and does the math actually work? Where does your business live, where do your customers find you, and where does your revenue come from? And when does everything need to happen, when will you know if it is working, and when do you change course?

Answer those five questions with honesty and specificity and you do not have a business plan. You have a decision-making framework you will actually use, a document that tells you what to do when things get complicated, and a clear-eyed picture of what you are building before you spend a dollar on building it.

This course is for people who are serious about starting a business and serious about not wasting money doing it wrong. It assumes you are smart, resourceful, and short on time. It does not assume you have a finance background, a business degree, or more than a few thousand dollars to get started.

Twenty-five lessons. Five modules. One business plan you will actually use.

Let’s get to work.