What about the curveballs nobody saw coming?

In this fifth and (for now) final episode of No Plan Survives, Mike Carpenter and Benjie Hughes talk about the business challenges no one knew were coming. From unanticipated flops to market shifts and tech transitions, it seems the only thing we’re always coping with is change.

➡️ Mike opens with the story of how his company found a major new opportunity for a decades-old adhesive – and then failed the test that would have opened the door. How are they turning lemons into lemonade? What tools, advisors and inputs help Mike and his team tell real possibilities from pipe dreams?

➡️ Benjie explains (sorry, Bud-lovers) why prohibition and aluminum cans turned U.S. beer to swill for decades, and what the microbrewery resurgence offers our responses to AI. He recounts the options he saw on the table when he recently repositioned Hopeless Marketing – and he makes his choice.

No Plan Survives is about what happens when our business vision crashes into our business reality – and the new things we create as a result.

This is a limited series: Two entrepreneurs, five days, five topics. Each day we each bring one story from our business journeys, told in three acts:

• What was your plan?
• How did reality wreck it?
• What new thing was born as a result?

Then we interrogate those stories – and each other.

Visit Mike's business here, get Benjie's weekly emails here, or learn more at noplan.show.

No Plan Survives is edited by Kyle Schmidt. Visual design by Bryon Elliot. Music by Benjie Hughes.

00:00 Mike: Breakthroughs and Reality Checks

03:25 No Plan Survives Intro: Strategy vs Reality

03:57 Choosing Your Bets on the Business Battlefield

08:39 Navigating Market Shifts, Regulations and Cost Shocks

13:24 Adventures with Amazon-Taking and Giving Up Control to Your Advantage

16:50 Benjie: Creative Work & AI through the Lens of U.S. Beer

20:47 Paths for Creatives to Triumph Over AI

24:13 Emerging with Market Position That's Not Hopeless

29:09 No Plan Survives Series Wrap and Reflections

When do numbers lead and when do they deceive?

In this fourth episode of No Plan Survives, Benjie Hughes and Mike Carpenter discuss how business data can clarify or obscure – and explore how numbers seem to serve us best when we keep humans at the center of our choices.

➡️ Benjie talks about his first board, his first P&L, and how the pendulum swing from having no reports to over-measuring – and then back again. He shares how he simplified his first company’s reporting and why the KPIs he’s using in his brand-new business are as much about motivation as information.

➡️ Mike recounts an early experience in the biopharma world that had him swimming in more than 300 monthly metrics and explains how he decides what actually matters. He critiques the ACOS/TACOS metric in favor of maximizing gross profit dollars and recounts an Amazon Europe expansion that looked great on paper – but didn’t turn a profit.

No Plan Survives is about what happens when our business vision crashes into our business reality – and the new things we create as a result.

This is a limited series: Two entrepreneurs, five days, five topics. Each day we each bring one story from our business journeys, told in three acts:

• What was your plan?
• How did reality wreck it?
• What new thing was born as a result?

Then we interrogate those stories – and each other.

Visit Mike's business here, get Benjie's weekly emails here, or learn more at noplan.show.

No Plan Survives is edited by Kyle Schmidt. Visual design by Bryon Elliot. Music by Benjie Hughes.

00:00 Benjie: Bagels and a P&L

03:25 No Plan Survives Intro - Dreams Versus Data

04:09 Early Stage Scorecards

06:31 Visibility Is Overrated

08:21 Stories Behind Numbers

10:21 Killing Bad Ideas Fast

17:52 Mike: the 300 Metrics Problem

19:35 Finance Myths and Human Factors

22:48 Marketing Metrics That Mislead

26:54 Amazon Europe Reality Check

28:24 Humanizing the Data

29:47 Episode Wrap and Reflections

What if your customers don’t care as much as you do?

In this third episode of No Plan Survives, Mike Carpenter and Benjie Hughes discuss how mission impacts messaging – and ask what happens when customer behavior doesn’t line up with the things we want it to.

➡️ Mike recounts how his company shifted from relying on resellers in the B2C space to managing its own B2C sales – and unpacks the messaging challenges that came along with that. If your B2B audience is quality-obsessed and your B2C buyers are price-sensitive, how do you message for them both without damaging trust?

➡️ Benjie remembers a client whose dream was to “operationalize love” – and unpacks the ways that mission did or didn’t translate to marketing, sales and operations. He argues messaging can’t be fixed at the copy level if it isn’t grounded first in strategy, in the value you deliver and in what your customers think they need.

No Plan Survives is about what happens when our business vision crashes into our business reality – and the new things we create as a result.

This is a limited series: Two entrepreneurs, five days, five topics. Each day we each bring one story from our business journeys, told in three acts:

• What was your plan?
• How did reality wreck it?
• What new thing was born as a result?

Then we interrogate those stories – and each other.

Visit Mike's business here, get Benjie's weekly emails here, or learn more at noplan.show.

No Plan Survives is edited by Kyle Schmidt. Visual design by Bryon Elliot. Music by Benjie Hughes.

00:00 Performance First Adhesives

00:35 B2C Price Reality Check

01:32 Two Product Positioning

02:52 No Plan Survives Intro - Message vs Market

03:53 Testing Prices on Amazon

06:57 Compliance and Certification

08:20 B2B vs B2C Buyer Journey

09:50 Made in USA Trust Signals

12:53 Operationalizing Love Story

17:04 Strategy Before Messaging

20:49 Hopeless Marketing Positioning

25:07 Elevator Pitch and Networking

28:24 Episode Wrap Up and Reflections