Business strategy can be intuitive, on the fly, and/or learned but it can never be “I don’t know.” What do I mean by that? I mean you can’t run your business without having considered the outcome of your strategy.

“If I had my choice between an excellent idea and an excellent team, I’d choose the team any day,” said Stephen Spinelli, co-founder of Jiffy Lube and former Vice Provost for Entrepreneurship and Global Management at Babson College, who was lecturing a group of graduate students in Tomasso Hall, while making his third and final point with the Timmons Model. 

Now is the time to start a business!  Right now because during economic recessions, when credit and capital markets are tight, entrepreneurs have to do more with less, they have to develop a lean-and-mean machine, and that behavior will help develop a frugal and disciplined approach to the use of resources.

When you're building a business the best advice that I have been given is to keep it basic.  That sounds a lot easier than it is because oftentimes we put so much thought into what the outcome will be that we fail to consider who, how, where, when and what we will begin with.  So let's start there.