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Many people cringe at the thought of creating a business plan. Most books on business planning are too complicated.

However, you still need a plan in order to know where you are going and how you are going to get there. To say, “I want to make more money” or “I want to grow my business’ is not enough.

Your plan has to be specific, targeted, and have a plan of action.

So, how do you start? Where do you start? Here’s the first thing I did.

I do not use a fancy, expensive planner that has more than I need. I do print off the monthly calendars from Outlook and put them in a regular 3 ring binder that I keep open on my desk with monthly tab dividers. Then I use my S.M.A.R.T. goals sheet and start planning for the upcoming year.

I was out for a run this afternoon thinking about how wonderful it is now that my life has really become all about comfort, especially how I dress. When I told people at 5 Days in July that I had to go shopping for business casual clothes to wear for the conference, they got a really big kick out of that. Seriously, my closet had become void of anything work related.

There was a time, though, that this wasn’t so. From the time I graduated college (wa-a-a-ay back in 1982), until I left my corporate career in 2001, I had to wear a suit (or dress), heels and pantyhose 5 days a week. My suits have since been donated, I haven’t worn a dress or hose since my father’s funeral in 2003.

Just for kicks, I thought it would be fun to figure approximately how many pairs of pantyhose I went through and how much they cost during that 19 year span. If you’re a guy reading this, my apologies, but please bear with me.