How Do You Plan Your Business?

[NewsletterScott]

We have all heard the quote...

You know...

The one that says, "When you fail to plan, you plan to fail."

So with that being said...how do you plan your business as an entrepreneur?

Do you take the time every three months to lay out a calendar and figure out where you are going for the new quarter?

If you do it this way, how do you think about your business, and create a plan for it in the coming months or year?

What drives your decisions to choose what you will be doing, and/or focusing your time effort and attention on?

Do you account for variability in sales volume?

If so...how do you do this, and how does that drive your choices and decisions going forward?

This is more of an open ended question, where the questions I asked above are a small sampling of the ones I could have added to it.

In your reply, you don't necessarily have to answer the questions verbatim, but please feel free to share what you do to create a solid plan for your business on a quarterly and yearly basis.

Here are more idea/questions you can ask yourself to help you in your reply: (What do you look at? What do you pay attention to? What drives your decisions?)

As an entrepreneur myself I have my own version of planning out my business, but would love to hear from other entrepreneurs in this community how they plan their business when running a successful operation.

I look forward to the conversation!

-Scott

 

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[exon]

Planning is biggest problem for me as well as many other businesses. Long-term planning kills motivation. I do not know for any business that has fulfilled all the elements of the annual plan, and especially the five-year plan.

When we do not execute the objectives set in the plan, bad feelings comes to us. And emotions are the ones who make decisions for us. So, no more big plans for me and by "big plans" I mean even on quarterly plans.

I do not know how is with you, but when I look back on my past plans, they are full of unreliable elements, elements from books, statistics and things that I didn't tried in practice.

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting
started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small
manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one." – Mark Twain​

Plans should only include things that will not change, otherwise, the plan is just an assumption, and we all know what assumptions are.

And I think this is the biggest challenge - keep the eye on the ball marked with a millions of dollars and be satisfied with a small implementations that are happening on the road. It is very difficult to maintain that balance in reality (for me).

Now, I make plans for next week, or even just for tommorow. And after execution of daily plan, I need to make changes in my weekly plan - with new insights that come from conducting a preliminary task.

I try to keep an eye on the ball and eliminate everything that does not keep me in that direction.