Okay, anyone who knows me at all knows that I don’t really hate anything, and I don’t really hate business plans, what I dislike is the way people think about, and then consequently use, business and marketing plans.

To me, a plan for anything is an action plan. If fact, the first step in creating a plan should be to decide how to update the plan. The document itself if merely a guideline. Things change, you grow, shift and bob and weave in this thing called a business. It’s the planning process, the digging to get some of the answers for the plan that contains the real value in this process anyway. It’s a bit like preparing the soil for a garden. The crop is what people want, but it’s the soil preparation that makes the difference come State Fair time.

So . . . that’s why I’m really thrilled to have the opportunity to give 10 lucky Duct Tape Marketing readers a free copy of Tim Berry’s new book – The Plan as You Go Business Plan Book. Tim is the founder of Palo Alto Software and chief author of Business Plan Pro – by far and way the leading business plan software. Tim knows more about business plans and business planning than most people ever will, certainly more than I ever will, and his approach, laid out in this book, is exactly why I started this post out with such an attention grabbing headline.

Tim doesn’t hate business plans, they are his livelihood, but once you read Tim’s book, you’ll understand that there’s a different way to think about and do business planning.

So, how do you get Tim’s book? Be one of the first 10 to answer this question in the comment section of this post – just hit comment and tell me – “I hate business plans but I love business planning because . . .”

All comments are timestamped, so it’s very easy for me to keep track of the order. Once you make the comment I’ll get your mailing address offline.