🍲 No one wants canned beef stew

Midway through my last year in college, I bought a six-pack of Dinty Moore Beef Stew. I remember how it happened. I was at Sam’s Club with my roommates, and I must have been hungry, because I was seduced by the free sample. So salty. So warm. Of course I’ll buy the entire pack.

Then that same six-pack sat on my shelf of the shared pantry staring at me until I graduated. Every time I looked back at it, I was ashamed of how I’d been seduced by a product that is barely distinguishable from pet food. Occasionally, more motivated by guilt than desire, I’d pick up a can, read the sodium content, then promptly put it down, my face puffing from the number alone.

I freaking love beef stew. The other week when it was absolutely frigid here on the east coast, my excellent cook of a husband made a beef stew, and it was divine. And it got me thinking about the difference between his beef stew and the now infamous canned version. 

They were polar opposites on the (surely scientific) stew spectrum. Both were edible. Both had beef and vegetables in a savory, umami sauce. But one brought comfort and satiety, and the other brought shame and sadness. 

What was the difference? Quality, fresh ingredients and care.

If you want to make a great beef stew – the kind that brings people back for seconds – you have to start with good quality, fresh ingredients, prepare those ingredients properly, and invest a lot of time and energy letting it all come together.

Now guess what this is exactly like...

Yep, your business plan. Freshness, quality and care are evident at first sniff.

So if you’re trying to appeal to someone, like a landlord or a lender, you need to give them the good stuff. Not the Dinty Moore canned version.

Now I hear you saying, come on, Sheila, you can’t get a business plan in a can!

To which I say, yes, you sure can. It’s called ChatGPT.

You can absolutely create a business plan with ChatGPT, but it’s literally like opening a can of pre-made, preserved product and sticking it into the microwave. Is it hot? Yes. Is it salty? Yes. Does it have calories and can you eat it? Yes and yes. Would you serve it to someone you’re really trying to impress? No way.

ChatGPT will spit out sentences that taste like real business plan, but the “shelf stable” and “ready to eat” product is a cheap imitation of the real thing. And what’s worse is that the “ingredients” are so recognizable they instantly mark a business plan as canned and lazy. 

Like professional beef stew tasters, those of us who read business plans all the time (ahem, brokers, landlords, and bankers) can identify a ChatGPT plan in one bite blindfolded.

So if you want to be taken seriously, there’s no other way to do it. You have to write it all yourself. Yes, your stew will require more resources and time, but you will love the way it tastes, and you’ll really love it when others tell you how delicious it is.