704: Crafting the Modern Business Plan, with Seth Godin

Coaching for Leaders

Dave Stachowiak

Education, Business, Management, Self-improvement, Careers

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2024

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Seth Godin: This is Strategy
Seth Godin has published 21 bestselling books that have changed the way people think about work. He writes one of the most popular blogs in the world, and two of his TED talks are among the most popular of all time. His blog is at seths.blog and his newest book is titled This is Strategy.

Seth writes this: “It’s not clear to me why business plans are the way they are, but they’re often misused to obfuscate, bore, and show an ability to comply with expectations.” In this conversation, Seth and I explore the key components of a modern business plan.
Key Points

Big problems require small solutions.
We often skip strategy because most of us have trained our whole lives for tactics.
A modern business is clear about systems and the status quo. Use the system if you intend to change the system.
Assertions are the heart of a business plan. Leaders need to have empathy for someone else’s “better.”
Articulating alternatives helps you stay resilient when some of your assertions are inevitably wrong.
Find people to support you who have a track record of shipping.
A useful business plan gets easier over time and persists (any maybe even thrives) when the world changes.

The six sections of a modern business plan:

Truth
Assertions
Alternatives
People
Money
Time

Resources Mentioned

This is Strategy* by Seth Godin

Interview Notes
Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).
Related Episodes

How Leaders Build, with Guy Raz (episode 491)
How to Grow Your Business, with Donald Miller (episode 629)
Doing Better Than Zero Sum-Thinking, with Renée Mauborgne (episode 641)

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Seth Godin writes this, it's not clear to me why business plans are the way they are, but they're
0:06.5	often misused to obfuscate, bore, and show an ability to comply with expectations.
0:13.6	In this episode, Seth and I explore the components
0:17.2	of a modern business plan.
0:19.2	This is Coaching for Leaders, Episode 7004. Produced by Innovate Learning, Maximizing Human Potential.
0:27.0	Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is coaching for leaders and I'm
0:36.7	your host Dave Stahoviac. Leaders aren't born, they're made, and this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful
0:46.6	conversations. Ah, the word strategy, something that we all know is important and yet how often we skip it maybe don't even
0:56.0	recognize what it is today how we can do a better job with strategy in our planning in the big picture and in the spirit of not just helping ourselves
1:06.8	helping our organizations helping people helping make the world a better place I'm so glad to
1:12.0	welcome back to the show Seth Godin. He's
1:14.3	published 21 best-selling books that have changed the way people think about
1:18.2	work. He writes one of the most popular blogs in the world and two of his TED Talks are among the most popular of all time.
1:25.2	His blog is at Seth's dot blog and its newest book is titled This Is Strategy.
1:30.8	Seth always a pleasure to have you on. Welcome back.
1:33.8	What a treat. You keep making a difference. More than 10 years, well done. And you, sir, more than, I don't know how long the
1:39.9	blog's been going, 20, but you are part of my thinking every week because I'm looking at
1:43.8	the blog and what you're thinking about. Thank you for your generosity and your work. I
1:47.4	appreciate it a ton. Well here we go. Here we go. So speaking of
1:52.1	starting things at the start of the book there are several
1:56.5	lines one of them you write big problems require small solutions that seems a little counterintuitive. What do you mean by that?
2:06.0	Oh, it's definitely counterintuitive. People think that if there's an emergency,
	...

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