Same Hole New Plan

Same Hole New Plan

A Cowboy Poem by Alan Nafzger

A man who digs the same hole gets real good with the shovel,
his technique is impeccable right down to every grovel.
He’ll hit the same clay, same rock, same underground surprise,
and call it a new venture with entrepreneurial eyes.

By the third time in that hole he’s got a name for what he’s doing,
a logo and a mission statement and a ribbon for the viewing.
He’ll tell you it’s a business plan with scalable design —
the bank will tell him something else along a different line.

I’ve watched good men fall in love with one particular bad way,
returning to it faithful as a rancher to the hay.
There’s comfort in a failure that you recognize and know —
at least in that same hole the walls are familiar as you go.

But the bank don’t grade on comfort and the market don’t on nerve,
they grade on whether you came out or if you stayed in the curve
of the same bad loop you’ve been running since the first time you fell through —
a business plan is just a hole until it gets you somewhere new.

A man who keeps diggin’ the same hole will eventually call it a business plan… right up until the bank calls it something else.

I’m Alan Nafzger. Appreciate ya!

Last Updated on April 11, 2026 by Alan Nafzger