Lean business planning simple but powerful way to get what you want from your business. Get focused, grow faster, and adjust to change. A lean business plan is an easy and practical way to align strategy, tactics, milestones, assumptions, and essential cash flow without the fuss of a full business plan. It's not a business plan document. It's just bullet points and lists and tables. Keep it short and review and revise monthly in just an hour or so. It's planning that matters, the process - not the plan.
The book includes easy ways to summarize strategy and tactics to remind you and visualize strategic alignments. It explains how to set review schedules, milestones, and performance tracking and measurement. It includes step-by-step explanations, with lots of examples, of how to develop a sales forecast and expense budget, and how to plan real cash flow. It also covers how to review and revise the plan every month, what to look for, how to pull in your team, how to decide when to stick to a plan and when to change it.
It's for all business owners, entrepreneurs, and startups. It applies the power of lean startups and lean manufacturing to simple daily management including task responsibilities, measurement, expectations, and getting the right things done. It's not about a business plan document. No need to include long texts, summaries, or descriptions. Just focus on what should be done, by whom, when, and why, and how much money it takes.
Its author is the world's leading expert on business planning, not just a consultant or academic, but an entrepreneur who bootstrapped his own company to multi-million sales, was a co-founder of another company that went public, and advises multiple startups and small businesses. And he's a Stanford MBA and angel investor.
In a
Foreword written by Guy Kawasaki, he says: "I'm recommending this book because what Tim calls a lean business plan is pretty much what I call the MATT (for milestones, assumptions, tests, and tasks) in The Art of the Start.
"Tim's lean plan involves bullet points, lists, and tables that help you run your business--as opposed to pitch investors. This includes the metrics you can track, milestones, assumptions, regular review, and frequent revisions.
"Use this book to get what you want from your business. Use it to focus, set priorities, follow up on what needs doing, manage people and resources, and get the right things done.
Whether you're looking to start a new business or just run an existing business better, this book will help you set a strategic focus and tactics to match. If you do end up dealing with investors who want a business plan, this book even explains how you can stick with a lean plan and add what investors want."
Takeaways: - A simple powerful easy way to get what you want from your business. Any business, existing, startup, or in the planning stage.
- Use it to stay focused, grow faster, and adjust quickly to change. Set expectations and track results.
- Use it to review and revise regularly to simplify and watch the important milestones
- Know when to stick to the plan, when to change it, and how to tell the difference
- Learn how to easily forecast sales, expenses, and cash flow
- Set priorities for long term and manage steps in the short term.
- No texts, no explanations needed. Just lists and tables.
- Learn how to manage for results.
Just Google "business plan expert" and you'll see that Tim Berry is the world's leading expert on business planning. Well-known author Pamela Slim calls him the Obi-wan Kenobi of business planning. Small business radio host Jim Blasingame calls him "the world guru on business planning." He's the expert other experts turn to. He's been interviewed on business planning by CNN, Forbes, USA Today, Guy Kawasaki, and others.
But he's not just a business plan expert; he's also a successful entrepreneur. He built Palo Alto Software from zero to 40 employees, multimillion-dollar sales, no debt, and 70% market share without outside investment. He was also founder of bplans.com, and co-founder of Borland International, which went from zero to more than $50 million annual sales in less than four years. He's involved in several current startups, has raised venture capital, and is an active investor member of the Willamette Angel Conference.
He pioneered business plan software, designing and developing Business Plan Pro, which was the first successful business plan application and the inspiration for LivePlan, the web app. He's also the author of The Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan, published in 2008 by Entrepreneur Press, co author of 3 Weeks to Startup, published by Entrepreneur Press; and Sales and Market Forecasting for Entrepreneurs, published in 2010 by Business Expert Press.
He has a Stanford MBA degree and degrees with honors from the University of Oregon and the University of Notre Dame. He taught "Starting a Business" at the University of Oregon for 11 years.
