Life Imitating Art, Part II (Life Plan vs. Business Plan)

In Part I of this multi-part article, I wrote about how the very existence of this company is the result of deep introspective thinking about what exactly we founders wanted to do next with the working portion of our lives. We then sketched out how our respective 'perfect' work experiences would co-exist with the demands of launching a new company.

The fact that we included the quality of our lives during the business planning process makes this particular start-up very different than the others with which we had been involved where 99% of the focus was on the the company product and its market potential. Experienced entrepreneurs know that typically very little thought goes personal founder's issues (other than monetary aspects such as equity, salary, etc.). Even more to the point, responsibilities are allocated on the basis of what the company needs and not what the entrepreneurs want to do.

So why did we interject our personal goals into the business planning process when so many others don't? Some reasons have to do with where we are at this point in our lives. We're a little older than we were with previous start-ups and understand a little more about what is required to go into a start-up. We also recognize the difference between personal and business goals and how they can diverge at critical junctures. In the past we probably both mistakenly felt as long as a company was successful then the founders would figure out a way to be happy. While a company's success certainly can be a driver of happiness and personal satisfaction, to equate the two or more accurately to believe a direct cause-effect relationship will easily lead people down wrong paths.

So how did we come up with a business plan that meshed with our personal life plans? Simple. We did it by first spending time figuring out our life's goals and determining which ones would be affected by the new company. Were there things that we wanted to learn or accomplish in our lives that were related to the proposed new company? For example, new technical or marketing skills that we wanted to develop? The more overlap between what the company would need with those things that we wanted to do then the easier it would be to minimize conflicts between our professional and personal lives. Case in point, my personal interest in learning much more about the so-called "web 2.0" which meshes well with LifeTwo's need to adopt the appropriate best practices of web 2.0 design. Things like our interest or willingness to travel, raise money, commute, etc. all factored in as well.

Recognizing the importance of this process, the founders of LifeTwo spent an inordinate amount of time on reconciling these individual life goals with appropriate business goals--market size, revenue potential, market need, capitalization required, etc. In the process several good business ideas fell to the wayside because they failed to mesh with our personal objectives. I'd like to visit some of these concepts later on because despite being good business concepts it was clear that they were not the ideal route for accomplishing my life goals at this point.

I've chosen to blog about this here as a way to introduce a number of concepts that will be central themes of LifeTwo and believe they apply to pretty much everyone whether or not they are considering starting a new business.

1. Chasing business goals at the expense of one's personal goals is not a long-term, sustainable strategy. 2. One has to know one's personal goals to be able to accomplish them. 3. Figuring out one's personal goals takes a surprising amount of time and effort. 4. The effort is worth it (see #1). 5. LifeTwo has been created to help you create and execute your life plan.