CREATING YOUR BUSINESS GAME PLAN Now you know what you want to achieve this year, it s time to make a game plan so you can actually turn those dreams into a reality. Like Martin Luther King Jr. said Take the first step in faith. You don t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step. So, don t get caught up thinking or worrying about how you re going to take step 70, 80 and 90, just focus on taking the first few steps. If there s something you really want to achieve this year, but you feel like you re never going to be able to make it happen, because you don t know how then here are some questions to help you: 1 What do you need to learn in order to be able to achieve your goals? 2 Who do you know that could help you to achieve your goals? 3 Who else might be able to help you that you don t know? 4 Could you do a survey? 5 What books you could read? 6 What courses you could go on? 7 What communities could you join? 8 What websites could you learn from? 9 What could you DO right now to help you? Taking action is the best way to start figuring everything out. As entrepreneurs I think we can often fall into the trap of thinking like we should have all of the answers, but the truth is we don t and that s perfectly normal!! We re not superhuman. So don t let that you don t know how to do everything stop you from making progress towards your goal. Focus on what you can do now and find resources, tools and marvellous people to help you with the rest. Okay? So, in order to start figuring it all out, I ve created some questions around business, money and marketing and then after that we re going to make a plan 2
Business & Money Plan Let s start with how much revenue you d like to generate How are you going to do this? How many customers will you need in order to generate that much money? 3
What products and services will you need to sell, and how many will you need to sell in order to reach your goal? Do you want to launch any new products or services this year? If so, what steps do you need to take to make this happen? 4
Marketing Plan What are you going to focus on doing over the next 12 months to raise awareness of your business? What steps do you need to take to grow your list and your following? 5
What do you need to learn about that would help you to do this? What things could you create to add more value and build your audience? Hopefully these questions will have helped you to dig deep and really get clear on the core goals, projects, strategies & ideas you need to work on over the next 12 months. Now we can break it all down and make a plan 6
CREATING YOUR BUSINESS GAME PLAN Creating your business game plan is simple. All you need to do is list out your goals, break them all down and work out the steps you need to take, prioritise them and set a deadline. Spend some time now writing it all out I love doing this, because by the end I always feel so much clearer about what I need to do and how I m going to do it. Step One Identify the goals, projects & ideas you want to have completed by the end of the year. I always find it helpful to just write it all down in one place, so you can see what you want to do. 7
Step Two Prioritise: now go over your goals, ideas & projects and prioritise them what do you want to work on first? What could you work on later on in the year? Go back to the section above and in the circles, number your goals, making #1 your first priority. Step Three Set a deadline & identify the steps you need to take: go over each goal you ve set and write down a deadline for when you want to achieve it by. You need to be realistic with this if you want to get 100,000 email subscribers, but you currently have 1,000 then it s not going to happen in a month. Instead you could break that goal down and say I want to get 2,000 new subscribers next month and then 3,000 the month after, and then 4,000 the month after that etc. Once you ve done that you need to drill down into each goal and write out the steps you need to take in order to complete the goal. Use the next page to do this you can print off this page as many times as you like, so that you can use it for every goal you have. (In your printer settings just select to print that page.) Something to remember before you get started is that this game plan is not set in stone. Having a game plan will help to keep you on track and moving in the right direction, but it s not the be all and end all stay flexible. 8
GOAL PLAN The Goal: The Deadline: Steps to take to complete this goal How long do you anticipate this step to take? When do you want to complete this step by? 9
FOCUS For me, the key to success is focus. When I know exactly what I m focused on I make so much more progress and progress is what we want to make happen! Often we have so many ideas we want to work on at any given time from testing out different marketing strategies, to learning new techniques, to putting new products/services together. It s easy to get caught up trying to do everything and then you end up achieving very little. This is exactly what I used to do and then I went on a mastermind with Pat Flynn, from Smart Passive Income, and he shared his strategy for getting so many projects completed. Here s what he shared: Let s say you have 5 projects you really want to work on: Creating a new opt-in Creating Facebook ads Creating a new product/service Organising an event Working on developing website Often we ll attempt to work on all these projects at the same time and we ll hop from one to the other and most of the time we re not making the progress we want to make and everything feels like it s taking forever. So instead of working on all 5 projects at the same time, you focus on one project at a time and you don t move onto the next project until you ve completed the first one. By doing it this way, you re much more focused and can make progress a lot faster. 10
MY GAME PLAN FOR 2018 Now, map out your goals over the next 12 months in the boxes below, it will give you a bird s eye view of what you want to focus on over the year and a timeline for you to work with. (If you just want to make a 3-month plan, then do that and then plan out the rest of the year later on). Think about what goals and projects you want to focus on and in which months January February March April May June July August September October November December 11
If there s anything else you want to add into your game plan or write out in this section, then use the space below 12