Last week, I worked on my quarterly business plan. I’d be lost without it, succumbing to shiny object syndrome every single week.
My quarterly business plan keeps me FOCUSED, ensuring that I’m always moving toward my goals.
(Okay, sometimes I still slip up, but I’ve got my plan printed out and taped right by my desk to help me get back on track).
A lot of entrepreneurs break their big goals into quarters like this. You can accomplish a lot in 90 days — but it’s not as overwhelming as trying to plan out your entire year in one go.
As a travel business entrepreneur, you probably have a lot of goals to juggle …. Maybe it’s bringing in more clients, or focusing on better paying ones, being more active on social media, upping your trade show game. The list goes on.
If you haven’t already, I highly recommend you block off some time for quarterly goal planning, to start prioritizing and systematically plotting out your goals.
And if you DO already set quarterly goals, stay with me here, because I want to share the strategy I switched to recently that’s really, really worked well for me.
Try This Now: The 1-Page Quarterly Business Plan
I’ve been setting quarterly goals for a while now. I’d block off a whole day on my calendar and bang out 5-6 pages of goals, timelines, etc. Everything I wanted to accomplish in the next 90 days.
Then I’d print ‘em out, stick ‘em in my business binder … and promptly forget about them.
This was happening for 2 reasons:
1) Out of sight, out of mind. I felt so “official” with my fancy binder. But I wasn’t looking at it every week.
2) I was trying to do WAY TOO MUCH in 90 days. I’d never get close to completing my five pages of goals. And then, when I’d inevitably fail, I’d feel bad — and make even more goals for myself for the next quarter, to make up for it. An ugly cycle.
Finally, I had enough.
So I tried something new last quarter:
A 1-page action plan.
That’s right, I had to fit my main goals for the quarter on one measly page (and I couldn’t cheat by using 9-pt font, either!).
That made me get crystal clear on the biggest things I wanted to accomplish for the quarter.
As a solo-preneur, I can’t do all the marketing things, all the time (and you can’t either!). With a 1-page plan, I was forced to recognize this. I only included goals in my plan that concretely moved my business in the direction I wanted. (Which meant that, for this past quarter, I personally had no goals related to social media, for example).
Plus — remember how I said I have my plan taped next to my desk?
You can’t do that with a five-page plan … unless you’re okay with papering over your entire wall!
But you can do that with a one pager. See:
I switched to a 1-page quarterly plan after coming across this Inc article by David Finkel. Check it out — David shows you exactly how to format your own plan!
If you want to SMASH your biz goals in this second quarter, you’ve got to have a (realistic, do-able) game plan. That’s where a 1-pager comes in.
I’ll be cheering you on throughout Q2!
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