Instead of a business plan, we wrote a manifesto.

The first thing my brother Mike and I did after quitting our jobs was sit on the steps of Union Square and gather our feelings and thoughts. At the time, it wasn’t about selling shirts or our old jobs – it was about what we wanted from life.

We knew we wanted to create a company that reminded us everyday of what we live for.

Our first product was the 100% recycled Holstee Tee. Weeks flew by as we learned the apparel process and worked with a cut & sew house to perfect our product.

We soon realized that we would need to invest a lot more time into production to align our output with our values. We had saved enough money to get us through the first few months, but that roadblock might have knocked us off the horse. That is, except for the two unforeseeable strokes of luck that fell around the same time.

First, we began hosting local visitors through AirBnB. While intended more for fun than revenue, it quickly turned our apartment into a bed and breakfast for international travelers. Soon after, we were featured in NY1 and on the cover of the Washington Post travel section. Our unexpected hotel business began to catalyze our work on Holstee, giving us time to get our first product to market.

Then, one day, we noticed we were getting far more twitter replies than ever before. The number seemed to grow magically as people tweeted, blogged and shared the manifesto across the web — and it’s still happening today. It turned out that by sharing our deepest personal values, we’d inadvertently created what turned out to be better than any press or advertising we could have afforded.

Today, our Manifesto has been posted over 80,000 times and drawn millions of views to our site. But a year and a half ago, Holstee was just a small side project. We’d sold maybe a hundred shirts to family and friends.

I think we knew all along that an initial business plan would have taken a lot of the heart out of us. After all, how many shirts do you need to sell to offset the rent of a New York City apartment, let alone growing business and production expenses? The numbers simply wouldn’t have worked out in the time we had.

It’s a confirmation that you can’t plan the extraordinary – neither the good nor the bad.

When it comes to starting your own business, the only thing worth planning is what you want to get out of life. Build your work around that.

So, what’s your personal manifesto?