The Pendulum SystemBooks by Nigel Elkan

Your Business
Plan Sucks.

And Here’s What Actually Works

Your business plan didn’t fail.
It expired.

Build a plan people can back. Then learn what your business must prove at each Station so you can put time and money into the work that moves it forward.

Click to PurchaseRead a Free Sample Chapter ↓
Your Business Plan Sucks by Nigel Elkan, with the yellow-folder cover and printed spine

When the business outgrows the plan

You kept executing.
The business kept changing.

You researched the market, wrote the plan, secured the funding, and launched. Then real customers, decisions and daily demands changed what the business needed.

Keep executing after the plan’s job is done, and the assumptions built into it can become the weaknesses you build into your business.

Your next move must address what your business needs to graduate from its current Station.

The Five Stations

One business.
Different stages.
Different priorities.

Good advice becomes useful when you know when to apply it. The Five Stations show the work to do now and the evidence required before you move on.

  1. 01

    Ideation

    Build a coherent, lightly tested plan that people can back, with viable economics and explicit risks.

  2. 02

    Experimentation and Validation

    Experiment with real customers until a repeatable buyer, offer and viable delivery pattern emerge.

  3. 03

    Inflection

    Declare your UBP, commit to who you serve and manage the cost of declining unsuitable work.

  4. 04

    Systematization

    Show that your team and systems deliver the promise and sustain performance without founder rescue.

  5. 05

    Category Leadership

    Substantiate category preference and capacity, then choose Craftsman, Merchant or Multiplier.

What you’ll learn to recognize

What to focus on.
What to stop doing.
What to prove next.

Locate your current Station, name its unfinished graduation requirement and choose the action that will produce the missing evidence. Spend less effort on work your business is not ready to use.

“Because growth doesn’t require a better version of your original plan.
It requires the right plan for where you are now.”From the book’s back cover

About the author

Nigel Elkan

Nigel has founded seven companies and exited five. For more than two decades, he has coached owner-led businesses on growth, strategy and execution.

More about Nigel

Explore the cover · 8-second rotation

A chapter to put to work

The 90-Day
Operating Rhythm

Read Chapter 6 of Your Business Plan Sucks. Use a quarterly reset, monthly review and weekly check-in to focus time and money on your current Station. Set a priority, check the evidence and adjust before an untested assumption becomes an expensive commitment.

Download the free sample chapter and plan around what your business must prove next.

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For readers

Put the book to work.

Get the printable exercises, Station plans and tools that accompany Your Business Plan Sucks.

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Your Business Plan Sucks

Find the plan for the
business you have now.

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