Client attraction. Business growth. Pretty profits.
3 Planning Mistakes Almost All Business Owners Make (And What To Do About Them)
Business plans.
The words themselves sound so serious, dull and painful. Like heavy work, am I right?
Now, I’ll be the first to admit, I am actually a total planner.
Give me a mind map, spreadsheet or to do list any day and I’ll be in heaven but in the past, it still didn’t mean I was hitting my goals.
Sometimes it felt much nicer to go with the flow.
Do you know that feeling?
Work when you’re feeling inspired and forget the rest.
Sounds idyllic….until you need to pay the mortgage or eat. Or your child has asked for something small for Christmas but you can’t afford even that.
It’s not so nice to imagine now is it?
But you can avoid the pain. You can even be confident about your business’ growth providing you don’t make the following business planning mistakes.
1. Not creating a plan
The old ostrich head and sand combo can be very appealing.
Ignoring the need to plan, to know how your business is tracking and hoping that any issues just disappear can feel like the easy solution.
Until it’s not.
Sure, short term everything seems ok. No feathers ruffled.
Then a large bill arrives or an unexpected illness for you or a family member prevents you from working as usual.
Your business can’t cope because you didn’t plan for contingency funds. You don’t have a backup for this rainy day.
Of course, if you’d had a business plan you would have worked contingencies into it.
You’d have created a slush fund too so that when your bestie says ‘come to Hawaii for my 40th’ you could be the first to respond with a ‘hell yes, I’m in.’
See it’s not all about preventing doom and gloom.
Having a business plan means you have space to take advantage of opportunities as they arise as well.
Think last minute getaway, car upgrade or simply stunning stationery as you come across it.
This will probably give you the idea:
2. Creating the wrong plan
If you think not creating a plan is risky, creating the wrong plan is just as bad.
What does the wrong plan look like?
A plan you never look at – you may as well not have created it because it’s guiding actions can’t help when you can’t remember what they are.
A plan with a crazy big goal – hello upper limits, general terror and an unwillingness to make any moves in case they are the wrong ones as you sprint ever closer to failure (because, um hello?!?! You should have already hit XYZ goal last month, let alone this month’s target.).*
A plan that doesn’t align with your personal values – perhaps you’ve created your plan to enable you to buy an investment property within the next 12 months because that’d be the ‘right’ thing to do but it’s not actually what’s important to you.
Let’s just say…good luck maintaining motivation.
*(I speak from oh so great an understanding.
Apparently most people double their financial goals each year to stretch themselves.
Little miss ‘I’ve got to go big or go home’ decided only 5x last year’s goal would suffice, promptly froze and lost all ability to be remotely productive.
When my kinesiologist suggested I shrink it a little, I promptly ‘recovered’ and had my best month yet in business.
Now I’m not saying you shouldn’t stretch yourself. Just be aware of your risk / stretch tolerance and go with what is right for you).
How do you avoid the pain of the wrong plan?
1. Know what is important to you both in business and personally. Set your targets accordingly.
You’ll probably discover there is a lot of crossover in terms of values and goals.
2. Create an action plan that breaks down what you need to do when to reach the aforementioned goals.
3. Only planning for income
Ah, this is a shout out to the phoney six- and seven-figure storytellers of the world.
Of course there are genuine business success stories. Many of them.
But:
Often when people are sharing their six-figure stories they are only referring to income, not profit.
Afterall, are you better to:
A. Generate $120,000 income with $95,000 expenses
Or:
B. Generate $75,000 income with $20,000 expenses
You tell me.
It doesn’t matter how much income you generate, if the costs are higher (and this includes investments in your business’ future) you need to re-assess the situation quickly.
Now if you’ve just started your business and have a ‘backup income’ such as a job, inheritance or another established business, expenses and investments outweighing income might be ok in the short term, providing you are monitoring your funds carefully.
At some point however you’ll want the business to support itself and become profitable.
If your business plan doesn’t include identifying and monitoring cash flow, you could get into a whole lot of strife very quickly and not even know about it.
It’s one thing to create a plan. It’s another to work the plan.
But if you’re not tracking results, tweaking as required and ensuring that you take both income and expenses into account, you’re headed for trouble.
Bonus tip: Creating your plan at the wrong time
Avoiding the above mistakes will set you on the path to reaching your goals and your definition of success.
No question about it.
But here’s the thing:
Timing is also crucial.
A lot of business owners focus on surviving the pre-Christmas rush wanting to get everything done before the festive break. They might also be trying to recover from a sluggish start to the current year.
They come back to business the next January, catch up on everything that’s come in over the break and then start planning.
Except that’s not such a great move.
January will be over and you’ll have lost a month of income potential before you’ve even identified which income streams you’ll focus on for the year.
That’s why I decided to create the:
It’s designed to make planning super fun, for you to get it done now and to ensure you can confidently relax over the festive break because you know exactly how you’ll hit the new year running.
You’ll learn the very system I used to successfully 2x INCOME and 5x PROFIT in my business the last two years.
The party will cover:
> Reviewing what did and didn’t work this year so you can focus on the awesome and forget the rest
> Setting YOUR financial and non-financial goals for 2017 because working hard in the wrong direction is simply soul crushing
> Breaking your goals down into 90 day plans because they are so much easier to implement and ACTUALLY achieve
> Strategies to stay on path – no New Year resolution meltdowns here
By the end of the party you’ll have your Profit Rocket Plan ready to action!
RSVP And Join The Party
The party happens this Wednesday 30th November at 7pm AEDT (Sydney time) – yes, there will be a recording.
Your investment is just $48 – less than a cupcake a month.
Don’t miss the chance to start 2017 on the right path.