As a child, when I heard about working in business, I imagined boring people in uncomfortable suites who hated their jobs and just wanted to make money, which in my head was the definition of evil. This was a path that I had instinctively blocked off from myself and believed was not somewhere my ethics would allow me to go. But that changed when my high school teacher gave us the project of writing a fake mini business plan. I hated the idea. Even so, I threw myself into the project and found pieces of interest along the way. It was as if each step I took in the project was a piece of a road becoming clear on the path in front of me. But once the project was done, I forgot all about it. The path once again darkened, but the foundation was created.
Skip forward to this October. A friend contacts me and asks for some help writing a business plan. All I had done in business work was that one project so long ago, but it was an interest that continued to hold me, so I dove right in.
I was expecting this plan to be a light little thought idea that we were working on, or something with a long timeline. But that's not was it was at all.
It began with a non-disclosure agreement. The seriousness of this hit me all at once and my first thought was "what have I signed myself up for and can I do this?" Recognizing this thought, I knew that I had to go through with the idea. Asking if I could do this meant I was swimming at the edge of my comfort zone, and I needed to push past it to find my passions. This deep dive into a real business plan was the scariest thing that I had done in college. We could fail. But instead of just a flunking grade, this failure would result in real harm coming to my teammates. If this plan wasn't well written and thought out, then my partners would be left without income and possibly homeless. We were putting our all into this project and it was something with very real consequences.
Our timeline was under six weeks. I thought I was getting into a car taking off from a stop light. Instead I was getting into a rocket that was already in the atmosphere. But it was fun. That was the weird part, as I was on this rocket already in the air and on its way to the stars, I found that I wasn’t hating it. No, I found that I was having a blast. I loved working on this business plan. It soon took over my life for a few weeks of its existence. We wrote an inform draft that was 50 pages long. Over 20 hours could be spent in one sitting, reading over this document and editing. After all, it had to be perfect. And it was.
By the end, the document itself wasn’t perfect, but the time and effort that we had put into it was. Those long hours were worth it. I am so glad that I said yes to this project. It has changed my life’s path from an interest in helping others create their dream businesses into the passion that is driving me forward.
Comments