How To Create A Plan for 2024 in 10 minutes

TRANSCRIPT AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED [00:00:00] Hey, Hey, so today we're going to steal something from. Hey, so today we're going to take immense action and we're going to create. And we're going to create a plan for your business for 2024. And around 10 minutes or so. I know this seems like a really big OSC and almost too good to be true. But I really want you to lean into the shitty first draft. Mentality. The shitty first draft is. The shitty first draft is a concept that writers use to really put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard in these days. And get something. Started the idea is that it takes you away from perfectionism. It gets you out of all of your. It gets you out of all of your limiting beliefs about what you're about to produce, and it gives you permission. To just. Try and create something. Badly. Okay. And. And we're going to apply that to your plan. So, what we're going to do is we're going to walk through the planning process that I use with clients. And I'm going to ask you questions. And I want you to simply think of what the answer is. You can make a note of it in your notes app scribbler on a piece of paper. The idea here is to just. Write down your shitty first answer. Okay, you can go back and revisit it later, but I just want you to get that first version of a plan down. So that you've got a starting point for your planning process because the white page of doom is not just a white page of doom when it comes to writing. So here we go. First of all, let's write down what your vision is for your business. Okay. Your [00:02:00] vision is what would your business look like? So your vision is what would the world look like if you succeeded at everything? If your business was successful, what would the world look like? And that can be the big world, your corner of the world, your family. What does that vision look like? Think five, 10 years in the future. Okay. Scribbled something down. Great. Okay. We're going to move on. Next, I want you to think about. What you want to achieve? Next, I want you to take that big vision and I want you to shrink it down into one year. So if we got to the end of the year, What do we need to achieve to feel like the year was successful? Right. Add-on this doesn't need to be numbers. It can be. I want to feel calm. I want to feel relaxed. I want to feel. Like, I don't need to always be on in the business. It can be words. Doesn't need to be numbers at this point. Okay now shrink it at one year into what is an actionable milestone. For the first 90 days. So for Q1. So we're going to come to the end of March. What do we want to have achieved at the end of March? Okay now. He has read, gets tricky. Based on all of that. What is your priority for Q1? Okay. And it's important to understand that. Your priority is the thing that comes before everything else. So you get one priority. Is it sales. Is it marketing? Is it fixing your systems? Is it. Building up your team, developing your team, hiring. The reason I want you to think about what is the prior. You might want to think here about whether you're trying to grow or trying to optimize in that first quarter. If you need more sales, then you're probably going to have a priority. If you need to be bringing in more revenue, you're probably going to [00:04:00] have a priority that's in the sales or marketing space. If you found that at the end of the. If you find that now at the end of the year, things are breaking. Things are taking more time. You're having to come in and fix stuff on the fly. Especially when you've been through launch season, you might want to think about some optimization. In Q1 and that could look like systems processes. Documentation hiring the team, training the team, delegating more. Okay. So you know what your priority is. Now I want you to set a KPI for that priority and you only get one. So, if you said marketing is my priority. You can either have lead flow. Or you could have. So, for example, if you said marketing is my priority. You could say that you want. More leads. So that would be okay. BI. You could say that you want better qualified leads and sales calls booked might be your KPI. If you chose sales. It could be your conversion rates. It could be repeat business. If it's sales, it's probably your conversion rates. If it's ops, it could be timing related. It can be time to. If it's ops, you might be thinking about time and efficiency. Like how quickly are we delivering staff? How often are we on time? It can be customer service related. So. Um, Number of like customer service, inquiries, or complaints. If it's team, it can be. If it's team, you could be thinking about things like how happy are the team each week? So we want to set a KPI. Right. And so not what not, what you've probably realized is you set some, you mentally set a KPI instead of a goal, right? So your goal is we want to increase all. We want to increase our revenue. What is the thing we're focused on? It's [00:06:00] marketing. What's the KPI lead flow. Okay. Hope that makes sense. Then I want you to think about for all the other areas of your business. So if you chose marketing, You've still got sales ops team and finance. What is your KPI that you're going to use to make sure that that area doesn't fall apart? While you focus on marketing. So while you're focused on marketing, you're gonna want to know that. You've got enough money in the bank that your team are happy that your ops are working, that you're making enough sales. Right. So we're not trying to grow those areas. We're not really focused on them. But what's going to tell you if that area is on fire. So you want to set those KPIs? Remember, this is your shitty first draft. Just write down what it is you think, even if you don't know how to measure it right now, that's fine. Write down what you think would tell you if that was on fire. If another area was on fire. Okay, next. I want you to think about what is your plan? Two. Next, I want you to think about what your plan is to. Next. I want to think out load. Next, I want you to think about how you're going to communicate this plan to your team. Are you going to do a team meeting? Are you going to do it individually? Will they be slides? Will there be numbers. How are you going to walk them through your decision-making? And then how are you going to help them? Help you implement the plan. So maybe on Mondays, you're maybe going to go kind of agile and go. We've got a 90 day period. What do you think you can get done in 90 days? Okay, let's bring that back. What can we do this week? And then I want you to make a plan. For how you're going to celebrate them. What milestones are you going to celebrate? Are you going to get to the end of the quarter and then celebrate? Are you going to celebrate weekly with the little achievements that have happened each week? Maybe is that going to happen in [00:08:00] slack? Is it going to happen in a meeting? What is that going to feel like? And finally, when we get to the end of the month, And finally, when we get to the end of the quarter, What is your review process going to look like. Right. So I want you to think about like, when are you going to do it? Are you going to do it in the last week, in the month or the first week of next quarter? Are you going to judge it on? The KPIs. Are you going to judge it on how the team's performing? What are the, what are you going to. What are the characteristics? What are the elements that you are going to consider? In reviewing how you performed in Q1. And whether that felt good or not. Okay. I said nine to 10 minutes. So there we go. Right. So its vision. One year 90 days, what's the priority set the KPI. What are the maintenance KPIs for the other areas that are under priority? How are you going to help? How are you going to communicate this with the team? How are you going to help them implemented? How are you going to celebrate? And finally, how will you review it now? That is a very quick, rough and ready plan. Right. It doesn't go into the nth level of detail. Which is my goal here for you. I think one of the problems with people do planning is they start in the weeds. They start with how much money they made and how many things they have to sell and all of this. And they forget to actually just completely step back. Wipe the slate clean. And go, okay, what can I do? At its most basic level. Now you can go, okay. Well marketing's my focus and I know I want to get more leads now. You can go, okay. Do I need a social media campaign? Do I want to go on more podcasts? How do I want to get visibility? What am I going to offer as an opt-in like. That's all the practicalities of implementing the plan. And your team can help you with that. [00:10:00] Actually empowering them with that piece of the plan. Is going to make. Is going to help them to buy into the plan and make it and. And motivate them to achieve it with you. Right. So you could take your shitty first draft of the old plan into a meeting with your team and say, this is what I'm thinking about for next year. Here's the vision. Here's where I think we can do any, uh, here's what I want to do in the first 90 days. Here's what I think the priority is. Do you agree? Okay, great. I think the best way for us to measure that is this particular KPI. Great. How do you guys think we could implement on that? Okay. So now if all the other areas. This is what I think we should measure to just make sure that nothing is catching fire while we're all focused on marketing. Does everyone agree with that? Great. Okay. You've already done the communication piece of the puzzle then. And then it's just saying like, Hey, on Mondays. Let's. And then it's just saying something like, Hey, on Mondays in the slack channel. Let's all just shout out what we're going to work on for the week. So that we can all see that we're moving in that same direction. And then on Friday, let's catch up and say what we did so that we can. All high five, each other virtually. Right. And if you want to, you can invite them to tell you what would feel like a successful quarter for them so that you can add that into the review process. Maybe for them, they want to have a quarter where they feel like they didn't have to call on you all the time. For example, Or where they don't feel super stressed all the time. That's that conversation with your team now becomes so much easier because you've just done the shitty first draft. If you're not ready to involve your team, that's also fine. You can totally now drill down into your shitty first draft, make it shiny, [00:12:00] make it clean, make it tidy, and then have a conversation with them. But at least now you have something on paper. You have a starting point. And you understand that it doesn't need to be perfect to be helpful. Because you now have a picture of what Q1 of 2024 could look like. Probably a pretty clear picture. Just by answering a few questions for 10 minutes. Just for answering a few questions. Just for taking 10 minutes. So I hope this has given you some confidence. As you go into your planning process that a, it doesn't have to be perfect. Be it doesn't have to be finished. On your first go. And see. So hope this is going to help you go into your planning process. Understanding that your plan doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be right on the first go. That you can iterate that you can bring others into it. And that actually your planning process. Is simply a series of a few questions. That you need to answer for your business.