Paul Rodriguez built Primitive with a cautious, risk-minimizing approach through detailed planning. But Evan Carmichael warns that over-planning becomes rigid while pure action creates chaos. The balance: solid plans you're willing to change when feedback arrives.
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Good morning, Believe Nation.
Today's message is: Have a well-thought-out plan. Now over to you, Paul Rodriguez.
I consider myself a cautious person. That's why I wouldn't just decide like that on any business matter. So for me, with Primitive, it wasn't like some just on a whim investment. I didn't just jump in like, I'm gonna open open up a store, make lots of money. Obviously you want all those cool things to happen, but you gotta really have an idea of where you want to take your project. You know, you just have to have well-thought-out plans so that way you minimize your risk and find yourself successful more often than not.
So what do you think?
I think plans are great, but a lot of time those plans deviate in a direction we might not think they would. For example, I wanted to be a political reporter. As a Canadian in the States, I didn't know the difference between the House and the Senate. On the first day of my job, I was late, I dropped the laptop and hit a prominent politician with shrapnel from my device. I was fired the next day. My plan completely took a turn, and while it's great if you have passion, I think you also need to be realistic about what that plan could be and the different directions it could take. We all have different aptitudes. Mine was definitely not part of the plan I thought I had.
I think there are people who love to plan and don't do enough time actually doing. And then a lot of people who love to do but don't take enough time planning. And whichever one you are, you need to spend enough time doing the other thing. I remember when I had my first business, we did a lot of planning. We spent a whole summer planning, perfect plan. Like, I need to write my business plan. Everybody tells you you need to write the business plan. And then as soon as we started getting out into the market, we realized that a lot of the assumptions that we made were wrong and we needed to actually take feedback and continue to improve our plan. And so I think the people who desperately love having a plan— you'll never write the perfect plan. The plan will always change, to Matt's point, right? It's gonna change. Something will happen. New feedback will come. You will change and want to go in different directions. But the people who just do and don't have any structure, the plan helps. So I think it's a combination. You need to have the plan, but you need to have the flexibility to adopt the plan, because I think too many entrepreneurs just stay on the same plan too, and then that's a recipe for boredom. In mediocrity and then you never change and continue to grow as you grow as an entrepreneur.
I agree, that balance. For me, the plan wrote me, which was why I failed. You had the plan and then adapted, and I think that's what I should have done in the first place. So the question of the day today is, if you've had a plan, what was the biggest obstacle or the person that completely threw your plan off?
Ooh, the person that threw your plan off, I like it. Leave it in the comments below, we're gonna join in the discussion. Thank you guys so much for watching. Have an amazing day.
Continue to believe, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another Shot of Espresso.
