Experience or a Plan

As I come closer to the end of my course work in gaining my Masters Degree, I am researching a few skilled and professional businessmen to see what advice I may glean from their experiences.  For this post, I will focus on two men, Chuck Blakeman and Dr. Steven Gedeon.

I was immediately drawn to an entrepreneur by the name of Chuck Blakeman because of his out-of-the-box views. Blakeman is an international speaker, author, and founder of Crankset Group. He feels that making business plans are not a great use of time management. He believes the time used to form this plan could be used doing business. He also has stated, in reference to Peter Thiel paying for students to leave school and paying companies money to become an apprentice, that education is not the key to success for anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit. He believes you learn when you actually build and start your business. 

In my search, I also ran across entrepreneur Dr. StevenGedeon, a writer, speaker, and director of the Ryerson Entrepreneur Institute in Canada. Similar to Blakeman, he feels that business plans are only required for larger businesses. He believes before you begin writing a business plan you need to ask yourself a series of questions such as what is the nature of your business, who will be your clientele, a most importantly is there credibility and a guide to action.

Of course, my favorite plan is Blakeman’s because I naturally want to skip to the end result. History has taught us to learn from the past so I will use wisdom and write out a business plan. I do believe that in every situation, we learn more while in the process because there is nothing like experience. I will also take the lesson from Gedeon and focus on the most important aspects.