Stop Planning For Perfection

TRANSCRIPT AUTOMATICALLY GENERATED [00:00:00] Hey, Hey. We're coming to the end of our planning series. And today I wanted to talk about something that I see people get really stuck on when it comes to planning. Plans on never going to be a hundred percent correct. As I've mentioned before, I did planning for years in banking. And it's never a hundred percent perfect. But the point of planning is not perfection. It's about the preparation for next year. And the strategy for next year. So we've talked about the value of planning as we've gone through the series. It gives your team direction and motivation. We make sure we're all pulling in the direction of the same goals. It helps to set priorities. To know where you're going to focus your resources like your time and your energy. It helps you to identify opportunities you might not have thought about it helps you to think about how you're going to mitigate your challenges. It helps you create a risk management strategy. I could go on and on and on about this topic as you know, However. The real secret sauce in planning. Comes when you take that plan. And you work that plan. And two things happen. So the first one, I want you to imagine that in 2024, you decide you're going to make a million dollars. Have a moment, let that sink in. Now imagine. It's the 31st of December next year. And you've made 500 grand. You could fall into one of two camps. You could be like, oh my God, I'm so excited. I made 500 grand or you can be like, oh my God. I missed the target by 500 grand. However, if you don't have a plan. Either way you've missed the mark. Because you don't know why you didn't make a million dollars. You don't know where you went wrong in your plan. Where you went wrong in your strategy? Where you went wrong in your implementation, you don't have any real data. So all you're going on. Is, are you excited that you made 500 grand or are you sad that you didn't make a million. It's all about your feelings and not so much about what you could have learned. If you had done the planning [00:02:00] process properly to make a million. You would know exactly what worked. And what didn't work. You would know what to prepare for next time that you hadn't thought of this time. You would know where you could be faster to pivot on something. You would know which strategies are working for you. You would know where to invest time and money next time. Even if you missed the mark by 500 grand. The learning that you would take from that experience. Is so valuable. Now, your next plan becomes that much more accurate. Just by going through the planning process, you have got to know your business. So much better than you ever knew it before. And figuring out what worked and what didn't work and being able to review your plan. It's just going to keep deepening that knowledge. And when this happens now, every decision that you make is easier. Every crisis that comes your way is simpler to navigate. Every time you have to think about growth. It's easier to see all the moving pieces. So building that plan teaches you about your business, working the plan, teaches you about your business And reviewing where the plan was right or wrong. Teaches you even more about your business? Let's talk about the other place that the real secret sauce will show up for you when you make the plan and work the plan. As I may have mentioned. 40 bajillion times. This week, I hosted a summit with 15 experts, speakers. And yesterday, I also opened cart on a brand new way to get support in 2024. Not just brand new offer for me, but like a brand new way entirely. I want you to think about what the last couple of weeks have felt like in my working life. Social media posts for 15 different people. Reels, Instagrams, making sure recordings were done on time. All the things, my head is spinning. But I had a plan. A very specific plan. And so when exhaustion sets in. Or. When that panic sets in, nobody will [00:04:00] sign up to the summit. Or that nobody will buy the thing. All I needed to do in that moment. Was work the plan. I do the next thing on the plan. We as humans make terrible decisions under stress. We're designed to survive. And that's really good because what you want to have happen is if a lion's chasing you, you don't want to sit there and go, well, can that line really run that fast? I could. I outrun it really. You just want to bolt to try and get away from the lion, right? So when you're in those moments of exhaustion or you're emotional and you're nervous and fear sets in, you're going to do whatever gets you away from that feeling. You're going to choose to not launch the second piece of it. You're going to choose to pull the plug. On the summit, you're going to choose to not host the webinar. You're going to choose to walk away on day. One of the launch. And if you have that plan. You know that the next thing that needs to happen is an email or a social media post, or a call with somebody who wants to join your program. Whatever that next thing is, is laid out in front of you. And you can take action. And when you take action, that's how that fear, how that panic. How that exhaustion kind of gets put to one side. And you just use the decisions that you made when you were in a calm, thoughtful, strategic state of mind. So as you go into your planning process for 2024, The goal is to focus on the process. Not fixate on the accuracy. The goal is to focus on the process and then review learn, adjust, and then work. The next plan. When you focus on the process. That's when you hit your goals. When you fixate on the accuracy of the individual numbers. That's when you enter analysis paralysis. And that's when you pluck a number out of thin air. And that's when you land up at the end of the year, not knowing why you are on or off plan. Was your performance really? That good. Uh, or was it really that your plan was [00:06:00] never good enough to start with? You don't know. And that is a really dangerous place to live in. So as you take everything we've talked about into the planning process. I want you to remember to focus and not to fixate.