The Goat That Ate the Business Plan
Forty pages, color tabs and one very hungry goat named Beauregard made for the shortest and most honest revision cycle in history.
I labored over that business plan for five weeks. It had forty pages, color-coded tabs, a hand-drawn map of the north pasture and a cover page with the ranch's name in a font my niece picked out. I printed it at the library, bound it at the office store and carried it home like a newborn.
I set it on the porch rail for ten minutes. That is all it took. I had gone inside for a glass of water, and when I came back out Beauregard, a Nubian goat with a beard like a retired judge, was standing on the porch with a mouthful of page twenty-two. He chewed with deep concentration. He did not look at me. A goat that has decided something has no reason to look at anybody.
By the time I got the rest of the plan away from him, the whole financial projection section was gone. Pages twenty through twenty-six, the three-year cash flow, all gone. I stood there with the remains in my hand, a spiral of chewed corners, and I realized that Beauregard had, in his own way, edited the document. He had left the executive summary completely alone.
I redid the projections that weekend. Honestly, they came out better. I was forced to rewrite everything from memory, and I discovered that half the numbers I had been so proud of were guesses I had dressed up as facts. The new version was shorter, cleaner and a lot more honest. The loan officer said it was the clearest plan she had read all year. I told her I had a very thorough editor.
I brought Beauregard to the signing, in the trailer, and she took his photograph out in the parking lot. The picture is on the wall of the branch now. Some of the best advice I ever got about ranch paperwork came from the folks at country music on farm.FM, who said every good song is just the plan left after the goat gets through with it.