But I don't WANT a business plan!

I've been planning to start a side business for a few months, now.

Last summer, I was faced with an imminent layoff (it didn't happen), and I just happened to be reading the book, The Economy of You, by Kimberly Palmer.

Palmer's main thesis is that every gainfully employed person should cultivate a side business to diversify one's income and soften the impact of a sudden layoff or other career discontinuities. Sure enough, my job got transferred to another office, and I had to scramble to find a new role or take a severance check.

Well, I found another role, but the stress of such a sudden, forced change had me wishing I had other options at my fingertips. In fact, if I had had a side-business idling quietly in the garage, I might have taken that severance check and spun up that side-gig into high gear. But, as it was, I feel like I got caught with my pants down.

Now, six months later, the dust still has not settled from my role change. I'm still learning the ropes as quickly as I can, but things are starting to clear up. Now it's time to get that side-business going.

But what business do I want to create? It has to be a lightweight business, not capital-intensive. No bricks; no mortar---only something I can run from a Starbucks or my garage.

I also recently read $100 Startup and The Four-Hour Work Week. These two books specifically address building a lightweight side business ("side business" meaning you can run it in your spare time and still keep your day job).

These books have the gears in my head spinning pretty fast churning out new business ideas, and therein lies the problem: there are so many businesses I could start that the decision is huge. So I've taken a step back and drawn on yet another book that I read last year: Business Model Generation, by Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur.

I'm quite taken with business models and their generation. The Business Model Canvas makes you ask the right questions to get you to focus all of your resources on the task at hand. Since I don't expect to approach a bank or investors for capital, I like to think of the Business Model Canvas as a business plan on a single sheet of poster board. Customers, value propositions, operations, and cash flow are the key pieces of the game.

If I don't develop a viable business model, my efforts building a side business will be for naught. The first questions I must answer are:

• Who is my target market?
• What value do I want to create for them for which they would gladly pay?

Until I get those two questions answered, I'm just spinning my wheels.

Which brings me to the next book I'll probably read: Value Proposition Design, also by Alexander Osterwalder, et al, now on order from Amazon. I've read a bunch of the free online sample. It sounds like I need to do some research.