Scan time: 2-3 minutes / Read time: 3-5 minutes
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Hey rebel ideapreneurs 🦸♂️🦸♀️
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🙋♂️ Sam’s plan in his head
Sam is an operations manager who writes a newsletter on the side, on simple systems for small-business owners.
The plan for his newsletter lives in his head.
In January it was interviews with shop owners, in March it was short tips, and this week he’s thinking about a co-writer.
None of that was ever written down, so each time it changed,he forgot it had ever been different.
🧩 His struggle:
He thinks a proper plan takes a week to write, so he never writes one down.
At lunch, a coworker tells him the true story of a man
who also had a new business and no written plan,
and built it into one of the largest software companies in the world.
His first plan was shorter than this email.
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✉️ The plan on the back of an envelope
Marc Benioff wrote the plan for his new company on the back of an envelope.
The year was 1999 and the company was Salesforce.
He called it the V2MOM, and it’s five questions.
Vision — what do you want.
Values — what matters most, in order, so when two of them collide you already know which wins.
Methods — what you’ll actually do.
Obstacles — what’s in the way.
Measures — how you’ll know it worked.
That’s the whole thing.
Five headings, one page.
Turns out Salesforce is now one of the largest software companies in the world, well past $41 billion in annual revenue.
The V2MOM is still how it plans.
Every employee writes one, and each person’s page links up to their manager’s page.
The part worth stealing isn’t the acronym.
It’s that a company that size never allowed the plan to become a document nobody reads.
A one-person business doesn’t need any of that, because there’s no manager’s page for yours to link up to.
You need it to exist somewhere other than your head,
and to be short enough that you’ll actually rewrite it when things change.
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🔥 The recipe
➡️ The One-Page Plan
Marc put Salesforce on the back of an envelope and still plans that way,
and the company is now well past $41 billion in annual revenue.
What he did has a name: The One-Page Plan.
He wasn’t just writing the plan down.
He made the whole plan fit on one page,
because if it doesn’t fit on a single page, it isn’t decided yet.
So the plan stops living only in your head,where it quietly changes every few months.
And when the plan changes, you notice, because you have to change the page.
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🛠️ Sam’s turn
So what about Sam, whose plan for his newsletterlives only in his head and changes every few months?
That evening, he runs the prompt at the bottom of this email, and tells it what he wants his newsletter to be in a year.
His AI sidekick comes back with one clear answer:
Put your whole plan on one page tonight, and only ever change it on that page.
He fills in the five headings on one sheet of paper before bed.
The next morning, he tapes it above his desk.
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🌅 Two months later
The page is still above Sam’s desk.
He has sent an issue every week since, all on the same plan.
He changed one line on the page last month, and he knew exactly when and why.
Two hundred people read his newsletter now.
A plan doesn’t need a week of work.
It needs one page.
Put your whole plan on one page, not in your head.
That’s it, my fellow anti-status-quo-ers!
Yours ‘helping you skip years of pain and frustration in your life and business’ Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️
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🏄♀️ The prompt
The prompt below fills in your five headings from what you already know, and shows you which
one you cannot answer yet.
🧰 What you’ll need
What you’re building, where it is right now, and what you want it to be in a year
- Type it, or say it out loud with a voice tool.
- e.g. a weekly newsletter on simple systems for small-business owners, 12 issues in, 180 readers, and in a year paying for itself with one paid productWhat you care about, in no particular order
- The AI sidekick puts them in order for you.
- e.g. being useful, not embarrassing myself at work, keeping Sundays free, growingWhat you did in the last month, and what is actually in the way
- e.g. four issues and a rewritten about page, and I have five hours a week and spend two deciding what to write
🚀 How to run it
Open your AI sidekick, ChatGPT, Claude, or whichever one you use.
Swap the three examples, the text inside the curly brackets, for your own, then run it. If your AI sidekick can already see your notes, you can run it as is.
🧪 Want to test it first? Run it without changing anything, and it will use the examples.
CONTEXT:
- Use my own material first. If you can see my sent issues, my notes, or my subscriber dashboard, pull the real details from there instead of the examples below.
- If you know how I write, use my voice. Otherwise, write in a clear, warm, no-jargon voice — first-person, plain words, no startup-speak.
- If you know who my readers are, write for them. Otherwise assume small-business owners who want simple systems for running their business.
- If I have replaced the examples, use only mine. If an example is still there, fill it in from what you already know about me, and mark it as your assumption. If you don't know anything about me yet, use the example exactly as written.
- The whole output must fit on one page. If something will not fit, say what you cut and why — do not extend the page.
=============== INPUTS — edit these, or just run as is ===============
What I am building, where it is right now, and what I want it to be in a year:
{e.g. a weekly newsletter on simple systems for small-business owners, 12 issues in, 180 readers, and in a year paying for itself with one paid product}
What I care about, in no particular order:
{e.g. being useful, not embarrassing myself at work, keeping Sundays free, growing}
What I did in the last month, and what is actually in the way:
{e.g. four issues and a rewritten about page, and I have five hours a week and spend two deciding what to write}
======================== END OF INPUTS ========================
Outputs:
1. Vision — one sentence on where this is going, in plain words, no adjectives.
2. Values in RANKED order — the ones I listed, forced into a sequence, with the specific conflict each ranking resolves.
3. Methods — the three things I will actually do, given the hours I said I have.
4. Obstacles — what is genuinely in the way, separating what I control from what I do not.
5. Measures — how I will know in ninety days, as numbers I can check without guessing.
Then tell me which of the five I could not answer properly, because that is the real finding.