Did we rock these last few months or what?
We took a few deep breaths of Gratitude, celebrated the holidays with people we love and went step by step through planning our BIG goals for a prosperous year.
Whew!
So here we are at the end of Revv It Up – if you’re just joining us, some recommended reading:
1. A Year In Review (a fun, creative exercise that you’ll want to do)
2. BIG thinking = Better Results
3. A Lesson in Gratitude
4. Goal Setting
5. Money Talks Part 1 – Outgoings
6. Money Talks Part 2 – Incomings
7. S+M (Sales + Marketing…less painful, more rewarding)
And Now…[Drumroll] it’s time to put this all together and create an ACTION Plan.
With a plan, you know what to do when you get to work every day. Without a plan, you spend all day sharing funny pictures of dogs on Facebook. You call that ‘relationship building’ – I call that wasting your time. And makin’ it rain with imaginary cash.
Your Action Plan
Goals
List out your Big Picture Goals - you may find it useful to use something visual, like the chart below. If so, set up a different chart for each major goal.
1. [Example: Launch 3 digital products in 2013]
2.
3.
A Visual Action Plan
Milestones
List out the milestones needed to reach each goal (need a refresher? Read the Goal Setting post). It may help even further clarify if you plan these by quarter.
[Example]
Q1. M1:Create outlines for all 3 products + M2: Research and gather information
Q2. M3: Develop and launch product #1
Q3. M4: Develop and launch product #2
Q4. M5: Develop and launch product #3
Action Steps
List out every task needed to accomplish your Milestones.
[Example: M2 Research]
- who will buy it and why?
- distribution ideas
- marketing ideas
- who else has a similar product?
And so on. These are all separate types of research and you should spend focused time on each.
Resources
How will you accomplish your goal? Do you need money? Manpower? Workspace? Graphic design?
Write down all the elements that need to come together. This includes assigning tasks to yourself or others.
Due Date
Set a date to accomplish each action step (This is why it’s helpful to set Milestones by quarter – if you know you need to complete M1 + M2 by March 31, it’s easy to spread the tasks out in a feasible way)
That’s your ACTION plan in a nutshell.
Make a promise to yourself to spend some time every day and/or every week working on your plan.
Did you find this series useful? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. If you are looking for some personalized guidance, we would love to help your biz thrive. Sign up for our Kickstart Sessions at Spark Collaborative.
