Whether you’re a deep-and-detailed planner or you tend to be more loosely guided by a vision and some juicy ideas, every business owner will spend some time planning what the next month, 6 months, or year will look like for them.
There’s a bunch of resources available online you can use to guide your planning that look at sales, revenue, content, audience, engagement, and so on. And paying attention to those things can provide a useful metric to measure growth and set targets against to keep you moving towards your goals.
Today, I want to share with you the 3 simple questions I use as a starting point for my planning, before I even think about those things. I find these questions help provide focus and eliminate noise, so they act as a nice complement to those more traditional or typical metrics I listed above.
what do I want to do more of?
This can be business-focused, or encompass all the ways you might choose to spend your time. I like to start here because it helps me tune in to what I enjoy, what allows me to lean into my strengths, what leaves me feeling energised – basically, what lights me up and leaves me feeling good. Because don’t we all want to feel more of that in our day-to-day?
what will I eliminate to make space for that?
For most of us, there’ll be plenty of things that get in the way of us being able to spend more time doing what we love. Some of it will be unavoidable (bloody adulting), but there will be things you can shift – maybe you can delegate them, or delete altogether – to make space for the good stuff. It might be legacy client work that is no longer part of your core offerings. It might be things you said yes to because you can do them, even though they’re not your favourite. It might be habits that aren’t really serving you, like mindless TV or scrolling social media.
This part can get pretty uncomfortable, because it requires you to be really honest in your self-examination and it means you’ll probably have to get better at saying no and holding your boundaries – something I think service-based business owners in support roles are notoriously bad at (guilty). Keeping a clear eye on what freeing up this time will allow you to do will help to carry you through this discomfort.
are there skills or knowledge gaps I want/need to close?
I love learning and the opportunity to develop new skills (or strengthen existing ones). But at the same time, I am a magpie and will always gather shiny objects whether I need them or not. Many, many times I’ll see something pop up and think ‘oh yeah I do want to learn about that some time’ so I opt in, save it, and then carry on with my life without learning or applying anything (oops). So, this question brings some discipline and focus to my learning, and helps me identify opportunities and resources when they arise.
For example, in the first 6 months of next year, I would like to dedicate more energy to understanding LinkedIn strategy because this is important for my clients. So my first step will be to search my inbox and my Resources folder to see what I already have – but haven’t used – on that topic. If it turns out I don’t have anything, then I can seek recommendations, see what’s available online, and know that if something pops up during the year that is an area of focus for me. And, on the other hand, if I see something that pops up but is not aligned with my learning goals – that’s going to be a no for now.
Reflecting on your answers to these questions, often the next step is “Well, what will that look like? How can I make that happen?” And this is why I love to incorporate them into my big-picture planning, so I can start making choices that will support me to move closer to the outcomes I identified.
Tell me, what are the essential elements of your planning process? I’d love to hear from you in the comments 👇
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