Back when I was on sabbatical, I read so many books about how to get ideas for starting a business that, at one point, I was a walking, talking encyclopaedia of useful (or maybe useless) business generator questions.

Questions like if you go to a bookshop, which section are you drawn to? 

What did you love to do as a kid?

When do you lose all sense of time?

And What values do you want your business to embody?

These questions are all designed to get someone thinking about what it is they really enjoy, on the basis that what you know, enjoy or are good at is probably a good place to start a side hustle or a business.

And I think that’s good advice.

But there’s a way to completely shortcut the process.

A one sentence business plan which you can use straight away.

And it’s this:

Build your business to serve an older version of you.

I’m not saying how to do this.  Whether you create a product or a service, or fire up a blog, write a book or start a podcast is up to you.

But if you’d like to do work which you know you’ll enjoy and which gives something back, find a way to be useful for the person you were 6 months ago, 3 years ago, or even 10 years ago.

To my mind, the advantages are clear.

You know “you” better than anyone. 

And whether it’s in your career, your personal life, your relationships, your health or your hobbies, you know what took you from A to B.

And more to the point, you know it’s possible to go from A to B.

Really useful intel for anyone who is at A and would like to go to B themselves.

You can speak that person’s language.  You can empathise with their pains.  You can see through their obstacles and their limiting beliefs.

And, above all….

You can really help them.

And without meaning to, it’s pretty much what I’ve done too.  I’ve started a business which is exactly what I needed two or three years ago.

Three years ago I would’ve given my right arm for someone to show me how to break out of my burnout and general unhappiness at work…

Someone to give me some new thoughts about having more work/life balance...

And someone to help me see that there are options, there is a way through, and that escape routes are available.

I don’t know if this one sentence business plan will turn out to be useful for you.

So use it or don’t use it however you see fit.

But if I had my time again, I know this little idea might’ve taken me straight from A to B myself.  Especially when it came to my own business.

That’s all for today.

 - Tom

p.s. while we’re on the topic of breaking out and escaping:

Starting from issue 15, I’m going to be writing a new, regular column for the magazine New Escapologist.

The magazine is, not surprisingly, all about escaping.  In its various forms and guises.

If you’d like to find out more or if you’d like to pick up a copy of the magazine for yourself, all the details are on the Kickstarter page here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/newescapologist/volume-2