Three Things You’re Doing Wrong On Your Business Planning Day

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When small business owners begin to incorporate strategic planning days into their calendar, they’ve reached a certain level of business maturity.

They’ve decided that they’re going to work smarter, not just harder.

Business planning has the power to create significant and transformational shifts in business growth.

But it takes more than just scheduling in the time for a planning day.

You need to have a plan, show up for the plan, and then implement new strategies to obtain these results.

Here are three things you may be doing wrong on your business planning days and how to correct them.

1. Not being honest with yourself and your goals.

On a podcast the other day, I heard Jasmine Star say, “friends won’t tell you that your baby is ugly.”

And I really thought this “damn, that’s accurate!”

I mean, it’s a good thing that your friends won’t tell you if you have an ugly baby.

But also, maybe they don’t see your baby as ugly?

Just like you don’t see your baby as ugly. Your baby is perfect.

Let’s take this same example and apply it to your business.

It’s hard to be honest about the position your business is in because it’s your baby. You’ve put so much work into it, and giving your business feedback is like discounting all its wonderful parts.

But that’s not going to help make pivotal change happen.

You cannot go easy on yourself when it comes to the ways your business can grow and pivot.

You have to look as objectively as possible.

To help you get started, here are some questions you can ask yourself:

• What is it that I really want to accomplish this year?
• Where have I fallen entirely short of my capability?
• What feedback would I give myself on my business, if I were a client?
• Would I invest in my business? Why or why not?

The answers to these questions may make you uncomfortable, but as we all know, the good stuff comes when we step outside of our comfort zones.

2. Not setting a realistic timeline for goals.

Business planning can spark a whole lot of good vibes, positive energy, and manifestation power, but a surefire way to kill these vibes quickly is by setting unrealistic timelines and expectations for yourself.

Things take time.

From doing market research to creating a new product to launching that product to your market to potential customers considering purchasing your product to them actually making a buying decision and moving forward … it all just takes time.

And we often underestimate the amount of time it really takes, and we fall into incorrectly anticipating our business growth.

When we do this, we tend to get frustrated and throw away our goals the moment we fall short of them.

Instead, we have to consider all the parts to creating and launching the puzzle and setting realistic timelines and growth goals.

A great way to do this is by considering the word “growth.”

Growth (noun): the process of increasing in size

As the definition says, growth is a process.

If you have one client, working towards five clients is growth.

If you have five clients, maintaining five clients is consistent.

So if your goal is to get to a place where you’re consistently generating five clients/month, you’ve got to grow to that.

It may start with one client/month for 2–3 months, then all of a sudden you’re consistently bringing on two clients/month, then by month six, you’re at three clients/month.

Expecting five clients each month overnight is just not how this works.

Don’t discount growth.

Think about your new ventures in terms of growth, rather than expecting big results quickly, and you’ll be a lot more patient and comfortable with the results.

3. Not including ample time to implement.

Entrepreneurs are often great at big-picture thinking, but they aren’t always strong in the implementation.

Why? Because they hate slowing down.

Trust me, I know this, because I’m the same way.

The amount of times I fire before I aim is… not ideal.

Yes, it’s humbling, but I have definitely learned a lot from these experiences.

The only way to reach the ideal outcome of the big goal you’ve set is to implement it strategically.

Here’s how to do this:

Allow AMPLE time at the end of your planning day (at least 90 minutes) to begin implementation.

Take your goal and reverse engineer what achieving it will look like.

Here are things to think about:

1. What investments need to be made to achieve this?
2. Who is in charge of what responsibilities?
3. What reminders do I need to make this happen?
4. Have I created systems to support these daily, weekly, monthly, etc. goals?

Think about including calendar reminders, color-coding, and including essential dates and deadlines. There is a lot involved in the implementation phase, so any single thing you can think of that will support you in achieving your goals, include it on your calendar.

Leaving time to create systems and processes for implementation will allow you to tie up your planning day in a bow and call it a success.

You’ll thank yourself later.

As for how to end your day?

With my favorite two words ever: #treatyourself

Have a glass of wine, take the dogs for a walk, go for a run, hug your grandma, do whatever will make you feel good.

Because the next day, you’ll be getting right back to work.

But smarter.