Speeding Mentoring: Tim Berry of Palo Alto Software

Yesterday, I had the pleasure and honor of listening to Tim Berry, President and founder of Palo Alto Software. Palo Alto makes Business Plan Pro and Marketing Plan Pro—these are the best in the business. Tim was kind enough to come up to Corvallis for Speaker Lunch, which is hosted by Chris Nordyke. The idea is to bring in folks who can act as mentors for entrepreneurially minded folks like me. We get to hear absolutely wonderful, dynamic, accomplished people, ask them questions, and reap the benefits of their experience. Yesterday, my mentor was Tim Berry.

Tim passed on a lot of great stuff. He shared his journey with us—from Haight-Asbury in 1966 (what a time that must have been!) to Notre Dame, Mexico, Palo Alto, and finally to Eugene, where he lives now. Tim combined his interests, strengths, and talents over the years to create a highly successful, family-owned and run business. Now, his daughter is CEO of Palo Alto Software and Tim’s job is to write, give talks, and be creative. His latest creative endeavor is his new book: The Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan.

One of the main points that Tim made was that plans are always wrong. To me, that means that we make plans but life intervenes. The map ain’t the territory and the territory is always changing. Therefore, plan is a verb, not a noun. Planning counts and it’s essential but a plan—a static, hard copy document—is simply a tool. That’s one of the beauties of the concept of plan-as-you-go.

The analogy time Tim used was that of an axe. A twenty-five year old axe has had the handle replaced 17 times and the axe head replaced five. Yet, it’s the still the same old axe. To make sure your business plan acts like that good, reliable, sharp axe, you’ve got to keep it in shape. As a tool, a plan has to be used and kept sharp, updated and maintained.

In his blog post today, Tim reflected on his chat with us at Speaker Lunch. (Check out what he had to say here.) I appreciate Tim’s wisdom. He’s a stand up guy who really gets it. And his passion, delight, and good nature shine through his twinkling eyes loud and clear. And he’s right—it’s not just passion, persistence, and perseverance that gets us through. It’s family, relationships, and luck, too. We get blessed by circumstances that are out of our control and even the hard times can turn out to be precious gifts. If you don’t’ believe me, just ask Tim.