“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Now that we’re in February, it’s usually at this point that I can finally say that my business plan for the year is ready — even though I start reviewing and planning in December, I like to take my time finalising the plan so that I can be sure that it feels fully aligned with how I want to feel and show up in my business.
When it comes to my business plan, I live by the mantra less is more. In years gone by I’ve made the mistake of writing out an unwieldy list of ambitious goals only to have that list kick my butt just a few, short months later. There’s nothing worse than feeling like you’ve failed before you’ve even really got going, so these days I’m all about creating realistic and achievable plans, that, of course at that same time, stretch us a little.
2021 also represents the third year of using my own personal, more strategic, system for business planning, which which allows me to focus specifically on the goals that support my overall business aim and that details how exactly I plan to achieve those goals.
After reviewing 2020, my best year in business to date, I identified my word of the year for 2021. This for me is like a theme or intention that I want to guide my year both personally and professionally.
Initially, my word was E A S E. Plain and simple, I wanted life to feel easier in 2021 than it had in 2020. As a busy business owner and Mama to two amazing and energetic little boys (aged 1 and nearly 4), if I’m to avoid totally burnout this year, I definitely need to be guided by ease. As I thought more about it, I decided that H E A L T H was a top priority for me. Personal health and professional health, knowing in my bones that the former dictates the latter. Not feeling willing to let go of ease and understanding the important relationship between the two, I now have, for the first time ever, two words of the year: H E A L T H and E A S E.
With those decided, I turned next to my overall business aim for the year by answering the question:
What is it that I really need my business to do in 2021?
For me the answer to that question and my overall business aim for 2021 is:
To put in place the systems, services and products to scale the success I’ve achieved in 2020 to double my annual income without working any more hours.
With this in mind, I then set about identifying the three priority areas, I believe I should focus on, in order to achieve this overall aim. I call these my strategic priorities and for 2021, these are:
- Systems + Processes (to streamline my systems and document my processes so as to minimise time spent on business administration and repeatable tasks)
- Business Model (to make adjustments to my business model that allow me to reach more people, stay affordable and scale with ease).
A funny thing happened as I was writing this blog post. I did originally have a third strategic priority (Hub Marketing — to raise my profile by getting in front of other people’s audiences by leveraging guest post, interview and podcast opportunities), but as I started to type, I realised that including it would move me further away from ease so I’ve taken it out — ha!
Don’t get me wrong — I still think “hub marketing” (term coined by Tad Hargrave) is important and would help me to grow but I think I’m happy for that area to grow organically this year and instead focus on refining my business model and operations for ease!
After I defined my strategic priorities I then set about creating the goals it makes sense for me to set under each of these priorities. After that, I write out the system(s) I will put in place to achieve it (hat tip to George Kao for the idea of creating systems to support goals). Then I schedule time in my calendar to implement the system. See my plan below for how this looks.
My Overall Plan for 2021
Strategic Priority 1 — Systems + Processes
Goal 1: To streamline tech systems/software to reduce expenses and minimise overlap.
The system by which I’ll achieve this goal:
- Schedule a half day during a February CEO Day to get this done.
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Add a quarterly systems review to my calendar.
Goal 2: Write out all the SOPs for my business. (if you don’t know what an SOP is, this definition from Tara Mcmullin is helpful: “A Standard Operating Procedure is the process you use to complete a given task in the same way, every time. Every business has unique processes that are core to its administration, marketing, value delivery, team management, etc.”
The system(s) by which I’ll achieve this goal:
- Create a template for SOPs using Tara McMullin’s template for inspiration.
- Schedule in training for my VA so that he can write out SOPs for the work he does.
- Add ‘create one new SOP a week’ to my CEO Day Checklist and do it.
Goal 3: Create email templates for all of my most commonly used emails:
The system(s) by which I’ll achieve this goal:
- Schedule time in the diary to identify email templates needed.
- Create one new email template a week. Add to CEO Day agenda.
Strategic Priority 2 — Business Model
Goal 1: Create and deliver a schedule of low-cost workshops over the course of the year.
The system(s) by which I’ll achieve this goal:
- Create a workshop tab on my website and announce all of the dates and titles ahead of time.
- Create a format for the delivery of the workshops so that I can easily plug in content for each workshop.
Goal 2: Create and execute a launch/marketing plan for the workshops.
The system(s) by which I’ll achieve this goal:
- Plug the dates and topics of the workshops into my overall content calendar and plan in content around it.
- Schedule time in February to create marketing/launch plan.
- Schedule in batch days to create graphics and other workshop templates.
Goal 3: Launch one new 5 week group program
The system(s) by which I’ll achieve this goal:
- Spend 90 minutes a month to work on developing this.
- More systems to be added at a later date.
And that’s it. It might seem light and it’s purposely so, given how much I have on my plate to deliver this year, even just working on 2 priorities and a total of 6 goals feels like a stretch to me. In fact goal 3 under priority is not set in stone and I won’t hesitate to cut it if I need to.
Hopefully you can see how these priorities and goals link not only too my words health and ease but also to my objective to scale (in terms of reach and income) without working any extra hours. Making sure my systems, processes and business model are all working together to support that overall objective is crucial for me.
And hopefully this also gives you an insight into my personal approach to business planning.
It’s not enough to simply set the goal, what we must do is to identify how we’ll achieve it and then focus on that system above all else. It’s the system that we want to schedule into our diary and truly commit to getting done.
So you see, when we’re clear on our business aim for the year and we create a context for our goals with strategic priorities and systems, our business plan starts to look a lot more supportive of our business success rather than an unwieldy and overwhelming list of goals.
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