The pumpkin plan
2012
Ratings3
Average rating4.8
15
Ratings3
Average rating4.8
Each year Americans start one million new businesses, nearly 80 percent of which fail within the first five years. Under such pressure to stay alive—let alone grow—it’s easy for entrepreneurs to get caught up in a never-ending cycle of “sell it—do it, sell it—do it” that leaves them exhausted, frustrated, and unable to get ahead no matter how hard they try.
This is the exact situation Mike Michalowicz found himself in when he was trying to grow his first company. Although it was making steady money, there was never very much left over and he was chasing customers left and right, putting in twenty-eight-hour days, eight days a week. The punishing grind never let up. His company was alive but stunted, and he was barely breathing. That’s when he discovered an unlikely source of inspiration—pumpkin farmers.
After reading an article about a local farmer who had dedicated his life to growing giant pumpkins, Michalowicz realized the same process could apply to growing a business. He tested the Pumpkin Plan on his own company and transformed it into a remarkable, multimillion-dollar industry leader. First he did it for himself. Then for others. And now you. So what is the Pumpkin Plan?
Plant the right seeds: Don’t waste time doing a bunch of different things just to please your customers. Instead, identify the thing you do better than anyone else and focus all of your attention, money, and time on figuring out how to grow your company doing it.
Weed out the losers: In a pumpkin patch small, rotten pumpkins stunt the growth of the robust, healthy ones. The same is true of customers. Figure out which customers add the most value and provide the best opportunities for sustained growth. Then ditch the worst of the worst.
Nurture the winners: Once you figure out who your best customers are, blow their minds with care. Discover their unfulfilled needs, innovate to make their wishes come true, and overdeliver on every single promise.
Full of stories of other successful entrepreneurs, The Pumpkin Plan guides you through unconventional strategies to help you build a truly profitable blue-ribbon company that is the best in its field. [per Amazon description]
Reviews with the most likes.
This book is essentially an argument for niching down (grow one prize-winning “pumpkin”), with a focus on streamlining your processes and delivering great customer experience. It’s a high level approach with very doable action steps at the end of each chapter, written in the author’s colorful, I’ve-been-there, slightly zany way.
Read this if you’re an established business/stuck in the grind/trying to get past that initial plateau of growth. I agree with his assessment of stages; that not every business owner is ready to make the hard choice to niche down, or the scary choice to fire the bad clients. If you’re ready to do what it takes and you like informal, actionable writing, pick this one up.
If you want to dive more into the process side of things, pick up his book Clockwork. I feel like that is a natural follow-up to The Pumpkin Plan.
"I tried to become Frank's definition of an entrepreneur, which, I later learned, is the only definition of an entrepreneur: "You're not an entrepreneur yet, Mike. Entrepreneurs don't do most of the work. Entrepreneurs identify the problems, discover the opportunities and then build processes to allow other people and other things to do the work."" (Mike Michalowicz, The Pumpkin Plan)
