Plan for your success

Did you know that 93% of New Year's resolutions fail by January 15?

How are you doing with yours so far? What about resolutions for where you want your business to be this time next year? Did you set yourself business goals and do you know exactly how you’ll achieve them?

Two Four One recently facilitated a workshop for small business and organisational leaders to help them set up their plan for the year. It’s all about getting clear on where you are now in your business and where you want to be at the end of the quarter, the year, five years. Then you reverse engineer your way to success with these 7 steps! 

1. Set your goals and then focus on one primary goal.
2. Start with the one goal or objective that you’re 100% committed to, the one thing you’ll feel bad about if you don’t achieve it, or maybe there will be further consequences if you don’t get it done.
3. Great, tap into why it’s important to you and that will keep you motivated to do what it takes to complete it.
4. Now take the time to list everything that needs to be in place for you to achieve the goal. List all the tasks and moving pieces, large and small, that you can do yourself, allocate to a team member or outsource to a contractor.
5. Set Due Dates on all tasks and break big tasks into separate action plans. Even when you delegate or outsource, remember to set a Due Date so that your overall plan remains on track.
6. Use tech to your advantage. Plug dates and reminders into a calendar that will remind you what should be done by when.
7. Repeat the process for each of your business goals. PS: Look out for overwhelm. One goal achieved is so much better than 5 unfinished goals.  

Here’s an example.

If you're goal is to become the recognised thought leader or subject matter expert in your industry, think about what you’ll want to put in place to help you establish that part of your brand.

You’ll want to start thinking more about content marketing, which means you should be writing blogs, you could try to get opinion pieces, op eds published in magazines, journals or newspapers, you could host webinars and ask to be a speaker at any relevant upcoming industry webinars.

Each of those things requires several actions to make them a reality so take those tasks, break them into detailed, granular action steps and set a Due Date for each of them.

Set up a schedule for yourself. For instance will you batch produce your content, your blogs and email sequences by the first of each month for the entire month? Plug that in to your calendar every month with a reminder 2 weeks before, to track your progress. Now you have a plan!

Start planning for your success today by thinking ahead to February. What do you want to achieve by the end of February? Write that task list now, add the Due Dates and plug them into a calendar – with reminders.
Perfect, now you’re planning for success!

For more planning insights and to help motivate you to succeed, tap here to tune in to Level-Up Your Marketing with Vicki & Laura podcast or listen on your favourite player, just published!