To realize your business dream and succeed wildly on your terms, you need a damn attitudeand a DAMN Plan.

As the director of a women’s business center and business consultant for multiple U.S. Small Business Administration-funded business centers and community development financial institutions, I have written hundreds of business plans with clients. With those plans in hand, my clients found investors, debt financing, and even grants, but their success hinged entirely on their attitude toward the work that must be done. Those that were willing to do what it really took, succeeded. Those that were not willing to focus and act consistently struggled.

Their experiences and my own adventures navigating start-up and growth has shown me that we all need more than a standard, take-it-to-your-banker business plan. You don’t need another document filled with pretty graphs, marketing data, and pie-in-the-sky financials.

Good Lord, no! Business is personal. Your business plan, your DAMN Plan, must address and make decisions within the context of the very real you and the very real life you live—the good, the bad, and the ugly. That is why DAMN starts with D for determined-decisions, not just measly decisions without teeth. Determined-decisions have tiger teeth.

So let’s start with a definition of determined-decisions. Yes, I made this up. I had to. We needed both words together, hyphenated.

The word decide, is derived from the Latin decidere which literally means to cut off. When you decide you must give up other options in favor of whatyou think will be best. Deciding implies you have given a particular matter a fair amount of consideration. It also implies you may have been wavering or debating between more than one possible solution or opportunity.

This can be a problem on so many levels. There are too many opportunities coming our way every day. Social media ads throw them at us like confetti. Then there is comparing your decisions to how others have decided. Are you right? Or are they right?

If you decide on Option A, you must give up Option B. What if you are wrong? You may lose time, money, or even your reputation. Well, then factor in the emotional side of having to give up Option B for A.

Yes, this is all part of the normal decision-making process. It’s called weighing, or analyzing, opportunity costs. Simply put, opportunity costs are the financial or emotional loss we may experience as a result of choosing one option over the other.

If it were just about dollars and cents, it would be a slam dunk, but here we go again: its personal. You start to second-guess your decisions about every