Obvious advice is everywhere. Eat better, exercise more, blog a lot, manage a Facebook page – obvious advice is exactly that: obvious. But what happens when you don’t actually follow this obvious advice? Nothing good. Make sure you’ve taken these two tips into consideration.

Many Traditional Planning Exercises will Get You in Trouble

Don't get stuck in "analysis paralysis". It's a problem for many companies. They over-analyze several markets, trying to figure out the best way to get into them. In the meantime, they are going slowly bankrupt. Business planning has very little to do with generating income. Execution and getting things done is where the real money is. Even if you're taking a risk, you'll probably make more money doing that than planning. Write a nice little plan, make it detailed, get the right ideas and move on. Your start-up plan can actually be as short as a paragraph or two; it's just supposed to guide you and keep you organized, not analyze the entire market and cost you a ton of money.

Assume Your Assumptions are Wrong

Let’s say you had a professional assemble a game plan for your company. The expert predicted that your sales would double if you stayed on the current plan you were on. You, since you hired an expert, assume that he is correct and base your next month’s actions on sales doubling before the end of the year. Although your intentions are good, you find out that your sales don’t double at all – in fact, you don’t gain any more customers. This is common – unless you assume your assumptions are incorrect. Make decisions based on the idea that you won’t be gaining anything in the next few months – or very little. Then, if you do exceed expectations, you can be pleasantly surprised by the extra income.