It Doesn't Have to be a 200 Year Plan

Today I saw a headline about making a 200 year plan.
Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Oprah Winfrey have created fortunes that will allow them to affect the future for millions of people for decades and generations. 

For us it's a little more personal. 
You, like me, have likely chosen the path of entrepreneurship for some other purpose. Instead of Gate's original grand vision of a PC on every desk, at home and at work; and his updated goal to give every person in the world a chance to live a healthy, productive life, you likely have aspirations for your family: time together, comfort, joy. 

It's okay to have a plan that ends with a comfortable personal retirement.
It's not okay to think things are going to stay the way they are now until then.

A marketing plan doesn't take us to the end.
It gives us the luxury to live until then with the comfort that comes from control and knowledge. Taking responsibility is how we can sleep with the risk.

It's good to know where the next client is coming from!

You Wouldn't Build A House Without A Plan

Our hero is driving for the first time on a road near his home. The road is well-paved, and he hasn't seen another car in 4 gentle curves. The fields on either side are verdant, interrupted for a moment by a small sign on the left that reads: 

Slam. Brakes. Pull over. What?
How could this be true?
Five acres in this paradise for an amount he can get his hands on in a few hours?
Really?

So he does what you or I would do . . . (what millions of people with a good business idea do) . . . he rushes straight to Home Depot to buy some lumber.

You didn't start your business that way,
did you?

Rolling toward the checkout he turns right on the plumbing aisle. Toilets. He's going to need a toilet. It's only a few hundred dollars, he may as well get it while he's here.

Loading $3500 worth of wood, power tools and the porcelain into his car (doesn't fit, worried it may fall out, but the price of the property is so good!) he pulls out into traffic and heads back to paradise, where he drives off the road into the middle of gorgeous to unload. Nothing fell out. Must be a good omen. This was meant to be, he thinks with a smile.

Are you picking up on the metaphor?
A good idea could become a good business,
but the concept isn't the most important part. 

1. For our hero the first step is to call and find out where the available property is.
2. Before he pays for lumber he needs to know what, exactly,  he's going to build.
3. And while he will need a toilet . . . first the land needs to be surveyed, purchased and cleared; a contractor chosen; the house designed and framed.

A marketing plan is to a business
what the design is to a house.

A marketing plan means
you build a business
by design.