Successful Planning

Clearly if you are just getting started, you may not have a plan in mind just yet. However, because you are just starting out, your plan is even more important than it might be to someone who is well established.

Your plan needs:

A) A list of your goals
B) Milestones of Development
C) Marketing Plan
D) Projections on Manpower
E) Reality Checkpoints
F) When to change directions

You might be wondering why these are important so let's examine them one at a time and talk about each aspect of your plan and why it's important to follow them. You may have to learn some more Internet marketing techniques.

It's critically important to your success to map out your goals. The reason for this is that it will allow you to keep on track.

Your goals should be not only your business goals, but they should include personal goals that are tied to your business goals.

Let's say that you currently work a full time job that you are not happy with. If your long term goal is to quit that job and be entirely self employed, this is a personal goal that is tied to your business goal. Perhaps you're not ready to give up the steady paycheck but you can perhaps plan to save enough money to take an extra week off work, then perhaps a month off work. Maybe you want your business to earn enough for that long dreamed about vacation. These are all great examples of how a business goal ties into a person goal.

Important

One thing to be very aware of in setting your goals is to make sure that they are realistic. We might be tempted to shoot for lofty goals, but make sure you lay out your goals in small, attainable and measurable chunks. This will give you a boost when you look at your list and see when each milestone is attained.

A list might look like this:

Month 1: Prepare my plan
Month 2: Execute my plan
Month 3: Earn enough to follow through
Month 4: Earn enough to save $200 per month
Month 5: Earn enough to hire someone to help

This is a great way to be able to keep track of what you are doing to achieve your goals.

Development of your business often comes at a steep cost, and this cost is not always financial. Understanding how much time is required to put your plan into place can be very intimidating and can require hours of work.

In addition, you will have times when you feel like all of the hours you are spending on your business are for naught. This is quite common, regardless of whether your business is brand new or it is established. This is one of the pitfalls of working for yourself.

Create a road-map of what you anticipate the development of your business should be. Map each "phase" from the beginning. Include what your time investment should be at each phase of your business. Of course, starting out, you are going to be required to put a lot of hours into your business, but the goal should be to reduce that over time.

Don't be afraid to include others in your plan. One of the wisest things you can do when laying out your plan is to include someone else in it. This person can be a partner, a friend or even someone you hire. Often, having someone else with a "fresh" outlook can help you stay on track.

Marketing is the name of the game in all businesses. You must be sure that you market yourself and your business in order to gain credibility.

Your marketing plan should include such things as name recognition, As with every other aspect of your plan, your marketing plan should include attainable goals. Each piece of your marketing plan should contain a clear cut explanation of (a) what you hope to achieve (b) how you hope to achieve it and (c) what the anticipated outcome is.

Each piece of your marketing plan should focus on all of your different marketing techniques. For instance, if your marketing consists of link building, it might look something like this:

Goal: Link Building
Hope to Achieve - more valuable links to and from my website
How to Achieve - by providing relevant and meaningful content
Anticipated Outcome - a regular flow of traffic to my website

This "model" can be used for each aspect of your marketing strategy.

We all like to think we can do everything ourselves, but this simply isn't feasible. Not only that, it's not sensible at all. Even the most successful small business has other people involved in it. Your expertise should be carefully reviewed and you should bring others with different expertise into the fold of your business.

All businesses need fresh input to keep them on track. Making sure you have someone who is able to look at your business with a fresh set of eyes on a regular basis should be one of your top priorities.

Don't try to get 'too big" for your britches, you don't want to build a conglomerate, you want to keep your business from taking over but at the same time, you don't want it taking over your life either. Most of us are not interested in having a lot of people reporting to us, but a small group of advisers and assistants can help your business grow to new heights.

Be sensible when laying out your overall plan. Decide up front which parts of your business you have the expertise to handle and find others who are capable of handling other areas. Don't let your vanity stand in the way of your success.

Every once in a while we find ourselves daydreaming about what might be. While this is acceptable, we often need to make sure our dreams are rooted in reality. This is where your reality checkpoints come into play!

Your "reality checkpoints" should be reviewed *OFTEN*. This will help keep you grounded as well as making sure that you are staying on track.

Your "reality checkpoints" should pull all of the milestones you've set for your business and put them into an easy reference point. They should include not only your financial goals, but they should also include your marketing, personal and other goals. These 'checkpoints' will enable you to determine what is working and what is not working and help you determine where you should go next.

Here's a small sample of what your checkpoint might look like:

One month after start
* Marketing Plan executed
* Making $500 per month
* Taking one week off work next month

Now this might look like 'pie in the sky' but this will help you decide where you should go next and also to see what is working and what is not working.

You might think that you have to follow your plans to the letter. THIS could not be further from the truth. One of the reasons you are building a plan to start with is to set up goals and expectations. From time to time, your goals and your expectations may change. If this is the case, your plan should change as well.

What happens if you find something is not working?

Let's say that you were running a very successful marketing campaign and suddenly it just stopped working. No matter how carefully you plan, markets change, people change and the economy changes. You must be willing to change with them. If you HAD a plan that worked you need to first determine why it isn't working any longer and adapt accordingly.

Change is inevitable. As a smart business person, you must be ready to change as your market and your business determine is prudent. Do not change just for change sake, change when it makes sense to do so.

Change can help you and your business grow. It's not something you should fear!