It’s the beginning of the new year, and with that comes new business goals for the year. However, have you updated your business plan to reflect these new goals? While business plans may be out of style in the tech startup scene, I feel they are still incredibly useful as an internal compass for your startup. I have one for my law firm. It’s nothing fancy, just 5 pages, but it is a valuable tool to help keep me on track.

Why Should You Update it?

It is important that you treat your business plan as a living document. As your company grows, it changes. Marketing strategies you thought were genius turned out to be duds. Partnerships you thought were guaranteed never materialized. Your milestones were too ambitious, and as for your financials…let’s just say you were way too optimistic. My business plan had some of the above issues, and that is why I am taking the time to re-read and update it.

A Compass that Guides you and an Anchor that Grounds You

Your business plan is your compass. It contains your passionate, albeit sometimes naive, thoughts on the business before it was a business. This makes it a great source of inspiration and rejuvenation for a tired founder. Also, as time goes on, it is easy to wander aimlessly and haphazardly from the original mission of your startup. Referring back to your business plan has the power to ground you, and get you get back on track. So with this new year, I implore you to dust off your business plan, read it, make necessary changes, get re-energized, and, most importantly, re-focused on the problem you are trying to solve.