Can't business plan, won't business plan?

“If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six hours sharpening my axe.”

Abraham Lincoln (clearly an excellent planner!)

TL:DR If planning for your business feels overwhelming, it needn't be. I cover a six step process that you can follow to help get clarity on what you want to achieve over the next 12 months and to help you break it down into manageable chunks that make it easier for you to deliver.

One of the (many) things that mystifies me is the number of small business owners who don’t think they need a plan to run their business. A staggering 75% of them to be precise!

Many business owners have come from larger organisations where planning, measurement and tracking are part and parcel of business life. Why when they leave to set up their own businesses do they think that it doesn’t apply to them?

Here are some of the ‘excuses’ I’ve been given for not having a plan:

• It’s all in my head.

• I don’t have time to plan – I’m too busy running my business.

• It’s only me, so I don’t need to write a plan (see also excuse 1).

• It’s too difficult – I don’t know where to start.

• If I write it down and don’t achieve it, I’ll feel terrible (or putting in your la-la ears as I like to call it!)

• They just end up sitting in a drawer never to be seen again.

  
  

And then they wonder why they languish in what Daniel Priestley, in his excellent book, Key Person of Influence, calls, the ‘Struggle Zone’. It’s characterised by small business owners who typically work on their own. They have no time, no money, are hugely stressed and on the verge of burnout.

Now, I’m not talking about the beast that needs to be written when applying for a loan or seeking investment, I’m much more interested in the actual plan you need to run your business. And whilst planning can seem like a painful overhead, it’s a remarkably freeing exercise.

Here’s my easy six-step business planning process:

Step 1 - Create your 12 month plan

Forget about working out your 10-year plan, work on a 12-month plan instead.

Decide what you want to have achieved in 12 months’ time to include things like:

• The number of customers you have

• How much they pay you

• Your sales and profit targets

• Other goals, such as having a new website, launching a new product, or taking on an employee

These goals need to be measurable – it’s not enough to say, ‘grow the business’, or ‘get more clients’. You need to be specific e.g. grow revenue by 20% or take on five more clients paying me £3,000 a year.

Step 2 - Break it down to a 3 month plan

Having established your 12 month goals, you can then work out what you need to achieve in the next 90 days, using the 12-month plan as the basis for it. My advice is to stick to three or fewer objectives. You're much more likely to achieve them, and be less overwhelmed by the enormity of what you want to do. To gain momentum, prioritise the goals that will deliver the most impact. Delivering against these will give you the motivation to keep going. Here is a link to a template to help you write your goals and what actions you need to take. Every 90 days you review your progress and then start planning the next 90 days.

Step 3 - Break it down to a monthly plan

Once you have your three-month plan, work out what you need to do in the next month against each of the goals. These tend to still be more high level, but more likely to start being task oriented. Once a month, review your progress and create your next month's plan.

Step 4 - Break it down to a weekly plan

This is the list of actions and tasks you need to do in the next week.

As long as all the mini goals and actions get you to your 12 month targets and goals, you can forget the 12 month plan and concentrate on the actions you need to take in the next week. Take action and review!

Get the weekly actions in your diary and start doing! And then check in regularly to make sure you’re on target and make adjustments if you need to.

Start each week planning your activities. Or to get ahead of yourself, plan at the end of the previous week. Review where you're at and work out the plan for next week. I like to do this on a Sunday afternoon - I find it gets me in the right head space for the week.

Get yourself an accountability partner

Whilst writing down your plan gives you a 50% chance of success (over the 10% success rate for people who have their plan in their heads), what supersizes your chances of success is getting accountability. If you share your plan with others and commit to your actions, research has shown, your chances of success rocket to 95%. So find someone to share your plan and commitments with. This could be a mentor/coach, being part of a mastermind group or finding someone who is also looking to keep on track and you can egg each other on.

See? It’s easy, now go forth and plan!