As you move into a New Year, or just decide to start a new business project, it’s imperative that you take time to plan your business for the year. It might not be something your think is important if you’re now working for yourself. Planning was probably what you did in a company or maybe others did it and just let you know your directions for the year. But no business will succeed without an understanding of it’s goals and strategy to reach them for that year.
Create Your Business Plan Early
You might think “How can I plan my year when I have no idea what I’ll be doing, creating, pursuing, or so on? That’s a good question. When you’re just starting out its the best time to do some planning. You consider the start up costs for one. If you’re going to work part-time on your business, what activities make the most sense to start building your contacts? If you’re going in full time, what type of daily activities will you engage in? I’ve worked with many type of businesses throughout the years and the business plan has been the primary document all have needed. My years with the Small Business Administration (SBA) taught me to first be sure a person who says they want to start a business has a plan. I learned early about business planning, even when the business idea was still fresh.
What Does the Plan Does for You
The plan gets you off to a start. It’s like the illustration you might have heard before, without a plan it’s like getting in your car saying you want to go somewhere but have no idea where you’re going so you get nowhere. And that’s a key, planning gets you started in a viable direction. It doesn’t mean you won’t shift or change directions as you move along. It also means you won’t just sit around for months doing nothing. The plan serves as a roadmap that gives you specific steps to take as you move forward. By saying you’re ready to do your business you’ve made the first declaration of a plan. Now, get some details going so you know what type of business you’ll create and all of the elements that go into making it a success.
Set Aside Time to Plan
Block out time to work on planning your business and encourage you to embrace this task as one of the most important ones you’ll do for yourself. It will take some time for you to plan so schedule it into your day. Over the next seven days, I will share some of what I’ve learned about planning and starting up successfully and what I’ve found helpful with you.
The Importance of Business Planning
First, let’s look at why business planning is “the secret” to success. There are a few different factors that come into play here. The first is efficiency. When you go in with a clear plan, you can focus on what’s most important. Instead of spending time trying to figure out what you should be working on, what pieces of the puzzle are missing from your product funnel, or what you need to do to break through to the next income level, you know exactly what needs to come next.
As we’ll explore in a future blog post, with a clear goal in mind and a plan for the year, it becomes easy to walk backwards to create effective and efficient daily to-do lists. Work on what needs to get done each day and you will reach your goals.
Better Thinking
Next, setting a big goal for yourself helps you think outside the box. If you don’t believe me, try it. Decide on a big income goal for the coming month. Write it down. Keep it in front of you. Then get to work and start to notice what happens next. You start to think of things that didn’t occur to you before. You come up with creative ways to get more traffic. You decide to run a fun promo that adds dollars to your bank account. The same happens when an important deadline comes up unexpectedly. Think back on that time in college when finals rolled around, or the last time your in-laws told you they would stop by later in the day. You got very creative about studying and cleaning respectively.
Last but not least, let’s talk about the subconscious. So far we’ve been focused on what we are actively doing to make progress by making a plan, setting goals and following through. There’s another dimension to all this and that’s what’s going on in your subconscious mind. When you have a goal in mind, your subconscious also keeps aware of that goal. While you’re busy moving through your daily to-do list, cooking a meal, and even in your sleep, your subconscious mind is working towards those goals as well.
Therefore —-
Therefore, planning and setting goals is important because this help you focus on what’s important and moves you to your goal faster. That means you end up with more money for yourself and your loved ones while spending less time stuck behind a desk.
Tomorrow we’ll get into more details about what goes into the business plan.
