Wednesday Wisdom: A Plan and A Path

Wednesday Wisdom, Inspiration, Success Strategies for Women Entrepreneurs and Female Business Owners

Bouncing with excitement I attached my new bike to the back of my car and smiled my way into the front seat ready to re-embark on my favorite bicycle path reopened after three months. Without the beauty of the 9-mile winding path covered with a canopy of green leaves, on the west side of Onondaga Lake Park, I ventured instead to the Erie Canal’s historic dirt path to exercise during my business lunch hours.

Onondaga County had a plan to close the city’s most popular outdoor fitness area in light of the pandemic. Finding an alternate route was a new way of life for the daily runners, bikers, roller bladders, and strollers of the park. But knowing in time, the County’s plan would change, meant everyone using it could create an alternate plan of their own to stay satisfied and fit. With the plan, we all could find a new path.

Leading up to my twenty-fifth celebration of being a woman entrepreneur in a few months, this topic of finding new paths hit me. Just like you, I wasn’t sure what the “entrepreneurial path” looked like when I started with one step on August 8, 1995. I just knew I was passionate and strong enough to step onto the path and move forward one foot at a time until a passageway lay before me. Once in awhile, I glanced over my shoulder witnessing how every individual step taken created a brilliant path behind me. Sometimes along that path, I stopped to rest, sought advice, created a different plan, imagined taking shorter paths off the main path for adventure, but always stopped to notice the lessons along the way.

When I glance back now, I see I couldn’t have accomplished a quarter-century of entrepreneurial success without knowing my path forward would shift directions at times and go up hills and down into valleys where I could celebrate and ponder my position and plan. No matter where I was on the long path of entrepreneurship, a plan was always part of the journey. I needed to know where to concentrate marketing dollars, who to call to land new business, what I needed to do to expand across the state, and the movement of the marketplace in my industry. I liken not having a business plan to taking off on a 25-year bike ride and realizing without a “road map,” where would I go or end up?

Today’s Wednesday Wisdom is to remind you if you are ready to begin a new business path with your enterprise, you must plan for the journey or else you could get lost along the way. The ride might be breathtaking but at some point you’ll wonder where you are or where you’re going. Even experienced adventurers of business and life know planning is an essential mode of transport to get from Point A to Point B. So where are you right now in your business planning? Are you up-to-date and on track? Has Covid-19 bumped you off the paved roadway you were on? Did you get lost for a moment but rediscovered at the right corridor? Depending on your answers, you’ll know what you need to do or continue to do to get to where you want to go.

Don’t worry if you are like me and you’ve already hit a few divots in the path, almost knocking you to your knees, because we know just in time we regain composure to venture on. Life and business are for the audacious spirits excited to plan the paths forward. Make sure you are both bold and prepared for the next part of this thrilling ride called entrepreneurship.