Robert learns that business planning brings clarity!

Robert had clearly had enough of his father’s demands – and judging by the vein that was pulsating on his forehead, he wasn’t in the mood for listening to reason. As we began to discuss the cause of his unhappiness, Robert started pounding the table in a display of pent-up anger...

Having trained for several years as a homeopath – and worked in a local holistic therapy practice in his spare time which he viewed as his “apprenticeship”, Robert was convinced that he was ideally suited to running his own business.

He’d chatted over his ideas with his family – but had become furious when his father had suggested that Robert didn’t have enough commercial experience.

I pointed out that his father obviously cared about him – and presumably wanted to make sure that he didn’t get into financial trouble. Robert gave me a withering look, and told me that his father had never had confidence in him.

“All my life he’s referred to me as the scatterbrained one in the family – and whatever I do, he just won’t shake his opinion of me. I don’t think he really takes homeopathy seriously. It used to really upset me but now I’ve given up caring,” he said, although his clenched fists belied his comments.

“Maybe,” I replied, “we need to do something dramatic to shake his opinion once and for all. After all, if you don’t like the results you are getting, then you are going to have to change what you are doing.”

Robert looked at me quizzically, so I took this as my cue to continue. “If your father thinks that you are really scatty, let’s find a way to prove that you’re not. Why don’t we spend our session together working on a business plan – that way your father will be able to see that you really are serious about your future.”

I’d expected Robert to look pleased at the suggestion, but instead he frowned – saying that his father had already told him to write a business plan, indeed that had been the cause of the latest argument.

I could understand Robert’s frustration. I told him that I too had always preferred to “get on with things” rather than spend my time planning, until a business colleague had told me that failing to plan was tantamount to planning to fail.

We both agreed that business plans sometimes felt a little pointless because they seemed to be based on guesswork rather than facts. “But perhaps,” I suggested, “the real purpose of writing a business plan is to make you think. Everyone knows that in real life, nothing ever goes quite according to plan – but at least when there’s some structure to your ideas, it’s like having a compass to navigate you through the tough times.”

Having now got the point, Robert and I spent the rest of the session working on his business plan. I’d made it clear that our purpose was to look at all eventualities and opportunities and it turned out to be a very creative process.

I’d smiled when Robert had said when we’d got to the end of the process, “I guess making a business plan is like putting the foundations in place when you build a house – without the structure, the building won’t last very long!”