My Business Planning Process for a Successful New Year
If you run an business online or offline, or intend to start one in 2017, now is the time to start business planning for the new year. I realize that for most people, the idea of business planning can be pretty daunting, and I have to admit, when it comes to my personal planning philosophy, I never like to make planning a stressful or complicated task. So today I want to outline for you my streamlined process for business planning with 5 steps you can take to get your plans mapped out and get a strong start to 2017!
Step 1: Analyze your current/prior year results.
So, if you are staring this process before the new year hits, you want to make sure to capture important information for how your business did this year in order to understand what steps need to be taken in the new year for success. Although you may not have complete full year data at this point, you can begin to collect key information to start the analysis and then fill in the blanks after the year ends. Key information you want to collect and review would be sales data, revenue information, content/traffic numbers, and follower growth. If you are not already tracking your social media statistics to get an understanding of your follower growth, make sure to start asap! I have a video on the topic you can check out here, that will teach you a simple process for tracking your statistics and analyzing them to help you grow your following.
Step 2: Set goals for the new year.
Based on the information and analysis in step 1, you will want to set goals for where you want your business to be in the new year using the same key factors. Set goals for your sales, revenue, content/traffic, and list growth, as well as any new products or offerings you plan to work on in the year to come. If you need additional guidance to help you analyze your current year data and set the right goals for the new year, here is a business planning video I made last year that walks you through my exact process. Block out about an hour and a half for this video, and even more time to collect and process the data! Although this process is streamlined, it’s not necessarily quick, so give yourself a nice block of time to complete this essential business task and I guarantee you will see better results in the new year just from taking this time to focus!
Step 3: Set up your planner and start working out plans before the new year begins.
When it comes to choosing a planner to keep your life and business organized, I think you need to go with what works for you! I use my Charmed Life Planner, and you can see how it is currently set up here, but whatever you choose, I think it’s important that your planner include some key items:
- A monthly view
- A weekly OR daily view
- Master task lists for each month
- Expense sheets for each month
- Project planning pages and trackers
- A notes section or dedicated notebook
- Year at a glance calendar for forward planning (get mine here for free)!
Step 4: Get your systems in place.
Systems are just a fancy way of saying a codified process for how you operate and accomplish specific business tasks. Systems are important because they save you time when you have your process worked out and don’t have to make it up as you go each time you complete a business task AND they come in handy if you bring on help for your business because you can easily hand off the system to your worker and they know exactly what needs to be done with little oversight from you. Here are some common business areas that you should have a system in place for, and I suggest downloading my free Online Business Incompletions Trigger List to help you think about where you can implement systems throughout your business:
- Emails
- Order Processing
- Finances
- Tracking
- Savings/Taxes
- Accounts Payable
- Inventory
- Manufacturing
- Marketing/Promotion
- Administrative
Step 5: Do some personal development to understand your personality type as a leader.
Did you ever wonder why so many important business figures and successful people are often associated with different productivity or personal development habits? It’s because they know that the secret to success doesn’t necessarily lie in your business plan- it’s all about managing your own personal development so you can operate at a higher level! Personal development as a category is a huge topic, so I won’t overwhelm you with a vast number of resources, but instead I want to leave you with two easy personality tests that I think every online business owner should take in order to better understand their strengths and weaknesses. The first is the Myers Briggs Type Test. This test helps you understand your dominant predispositions and from understanding these and your Myers Briggs Personality Type you can understand yourself at a higher level and take action to work on issues or challenges that your personality type faces to make you a more successful individual. In case you are curious, my Myers Briggs Type is ENFJ which means I am an extrovert, that uses my intuition and feelings to judge situations. I wrote a blog post all about the Myers Briggs Test that you can read here to get a link to a great free resource to take the test and get additional information to understand your personality type. The second test I recommend is the Fascination Personality Test developed by Sally Hogshead. This test is geared towards business owners and anyone developing a brand online. It essentially pinpoints different dominant communication styles that people use to attract others to them and their brands. My Fascination Personality Archetype is called the Victor, which means I communicate primarily with prestige and use power as my secondary advantage. Now with both these tests, It’s important to take your time answering the questions, don’t overthink things, but make sure your answers are as accurate to reality as possible because its not about what you “wish” you were like, it’s about understanding your true nature, personality wise, so you can find a clear path to develop yourself to where you want to be.
I hope this process has given you some ideas for steps you can take right now to set your business up for success in the new year. Of course, these are not the only ways you can prep your business, so if you have other suggestions, let me know about them in the comments below. Also, feel free to check out my YouTube video on this topic if you are interested. I’ll leave it linked above.
xoxo,
