Am I advocating that you should simply do this planning to obtain more money? No. Maybe your goal is to give more money to charity. Whatever it is, write it down. I am confident that you will be much more pleased with the results you obtain if they are in line with what you desire: Think it through and write it down.

I have heard the phrase “we can’t” too many times. For example: 1) “We can’t keep our milk prices high enough for long enough to even get close to our break-even point.” 2) “We can’t get our feed costs down to a reasonable level.” 3) “We can’t hire the right kind of people at our dairy.” 4) “We can’t get the appropriate financing to really accomplish what we want to do.”

In their book Why Not? How to Use Everyday Ingenuity to Solve Problems Big and Small, authors Barry Nalebuff and Ian Ayres tell the story of Croesus and his ability to successfully overcome any problem. However, they go one step further by answering the question about what you can do to solve challenges when you do not have unlimited funds, like most of us.