So, how did your business planning work for you over the last year? You did set aside time regularly to plan what you want to do in your business, right? If it’s not something you currently do, I strongly encourage you to embrace it for the remainder of this year as well as the one coming up.
Setting aside time at the end of the year, to plan out what I want to do and more importantly what growth I want to achieve in the coming year has been crucial to my own success.
Since this is a popular time of year to start planning, I want to share some of what I’ve learned and what I’ve found helpful with you over the next few weeks.
This doesn’t necessarily have to be BIG, formal business planning. But, if that’s what you want, Forbes.com has an excellent article on just that and there are lots of templates out there to help you with that.
I’m just talking about a more relaxed, but equally effective method for your business.
Let’s start off by taking a 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.
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. Don’t forget to work backwards on this. How much do you need to make per month? Per day?
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. Maybe some emails that have affiliate links you that are useful to your list. Remember, you’re doing the legwork for them and finding what they will find useful.
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 our subconscious mind. While we are busy plowing through our to-do list, cooking dinner for the family, and even sleeping, our subconscious mind is working towards those goals as well.
In short, business planning and setting goals is important because it helps you grow faster. That means you end up with more money for yourself and your loved ones while spending less time slaving away at your desk.