Hey there, friend! You're in the right place if you're juggling the demands of running an online business, taking care of your family, and trying to create consistent, organic content. A Strategic Planning Day isn't just a “nice-to-have”; it's a non-negotiable if you're serious about scaling your business and reclaiming your time.
So, refill that coffee mug, and let's dive into the five steps for a successful strategic planning day process your roadmap to business bliss.
If your business growth is not important to you then you’ll be stuck in your online business. Put on your CEO hat and be the person your future self will be proud of. (:
Why You Need a Strategic Planning Day Process
Your calendar should include a Strategic Planning Day if you're serious about scaling your online business. Done quarterly, this focused time allows you to step into your CEO shoes and map out a path for growth. When you have a set process for your planning day you'll not miss any important steps.
The Struggle is Real, But So is the Solution
If you're anything like me, you're juggling a million things simultaneously. Running an online business, taking care of your family, and trying to create consistent, organic content. It's a lot, right? But here's the good news: you're not alone, and there's a way to make it all work seamlessly.
The Secret Sauce: Planning Workbook
One of the most popular resources I offer is a planning workbook. It is 50 pages that are chock-full of all the prompts you need to plan well in your business. It is between the workbook and the email series that goes a long with it you'll have a strategic planning day process to follow. Would you like to know what all these things are that are in this planning workbook? Wonderful! I'd love to give you a sneak peek at it today, and I really hope and pray that it is helpful for you.
Are you ready to get into the five steps for a successful Strategic Planning Day Process that is truly transformative?
1. Create a Distraction-Free Zone
Do you want to know the first thing you must do? You should put time on your calendar so that you actually will do this, have integrity with yourself, and complete this planning day.
It’s a lot if you cannot get through it all in one day; no worries, friend, break it up into days, or maybe you want to stay at a hotel for a weekend. What is essential is you focus on your business and where you're going in the next 12 weeks.
Before you start, ensure you're setting yourself up for success. Turn off notifications, close unnecessary browser tabs, and silence your phone. This is your time to focus solely on your business, so make it count.
2. Start with Reflection: The Foundation of Your Strategic Planning Day
Kick off your Strategic Planning Day by reflecting on your business journey. You must take a step back so that you can look forward. You're going to spend 15 minutes journaling and reflecting.
Grab your journal and jot down.
- What has worked well for you
- Areas that need improvement
- Lessons learned (the good, the bad, and the ugly)
Remember, you're amazing, and acknowledging your wins is a crucial part of the process.
While you have your journal, let’s also do a self-assessment.
How happy are you really? Not put on a show fake happy, but like real, real happy.
How happy are you in these areas of your life:
- Money
- Personal Growth
- Self Care (Mind, Body, spirit)
- Family and Friends
- Love and Relationships
- You Time (Fun and Leisure)
- Home Environment
- Business
You're going to put a mark on each one of those categories from one to ten by ranking your happiness. A 10 means you’re happy and fulfilled in this area of your life. The areas that you may not be so happy about will probably be more like one or two.
3. Revisit and Realign Your Vision
Your vision is the North Star of your Strategic Planning Day. Read it out loud and ask yourself:
- Does it still align with your current vision?
- Does it evoke feelings of happiness, pride, and achievement?
- If not, it's time for some adjustments.
4. Set SMART Goals: The Heart of Your Strategic Planning Day
Next, stop in your strategic planning day and set your goals for the next 12 weeks.
How can you make your vision a reality? By breaking it down into small, actionable goals.
I want you to take a look at what you want to achieve. What are your top three business, personal, and financial goals that you have for yourself?
Ask yourself, what are you committed to achieving? Identify what you are actually committed to 100%. Without your true commitment, you may struggle to get it done.
Now, let's get down to the nitty-gritty—your goals. Break them down into three categories:
- One-year goals (Think big, like financial milestones)
- 90-day goals (Smaller objectives that contribute to your one-year goals)
- 30-day focus (Immediate actions to propel your business forward)
5. Commit and Break Down the Plan
A plan is only as good as its execution. Break down your goals into actionable steps, assigning responsibilities and deadlines. This is where your commitment comes into play; without it, even the best-laid plans can fall apart.
Have you ever broken down a goal into actionable steps, or are you more of a winger? Trust me, I wing with the best of them, but the things that truly matter are better off with a plan.
In step five of your strategy day, you will map it out. So, how do you make sure that you achieve those goals? You actually sit down, and you map out your goal.
Start at the end and work back to the beginning. How will you know that you’ve accomplished your goal? What was the step right before that, then the step before that? Map out all the different steps that must happen. Please keep in mind small, actionable steps that you can do every single day in order to move forward toward your goal.
Sit down and do a whole mind sweep of every step you think you will need to do to achieve that goal. And once you have it, you want to map it out with who's responsible.
If it's only you in your business. Well, you’ll be the only one doing the work. You also need to look at your time and the actual time bank that you have to get everything done. We tend to underestimate the amount of work and time something will take to get done. Make sure to give yourself grace.
To create your plan, you must also figure out how much time you’ll be working. It's time to pull out that calendar and determine how many days out of the office you want in the next 12 weeks. What days will your kiddos be home because they are off on a random day? What are the must-attend kid events? What holidays are upcoming? the holidays. All of those things. Then, you need to be able to reverse engineer from that end date to ensure that you have enough time to get all the items done. To make that goal a reality.
If it's not alone and you have a team member who is the team number that will be doing the work. You need to know all the action items; no more flying by the seat of your pants. You need to have the who, the want, and the when documented, preferably in a project management tool like Asana, Trello, or MeisterTask. All the actions are assigned a date by knowing the end date and revenue engineering the time frame.
Depending on how big your goals are, you may have a couple of goals in the quarter however, if you have something big, like a launch. Then, you only want one goal for that entire quarter.
Here is an example of how to set up an Asana Board for Goals and Quarterly Planning:
Map out important dates
As I mentioned earlier, you must understand your time bank for the quarter. How many hours do you really have to work on the goals and projects in your business? Do you have a realistic amount of time to get everything done in the timeframe that your brain is telling you?
It is essential to take the time to map out the dates and the actual chunks of time that you’ll work on your goals and project. When you do this, you’re not sitting down at your desk wondering what do I need to do today. It is all planned out for you in advance, thoughtfully.
Be sure to start by marking all the out-of-office dates on your calendar.
- Vacation Days
- Important Kid Events
- No School Days
- Holidays
- Add all the out-of-office dates to your Google Calendar.
Everything else is mapped around those dates on your calendar. It's important for me to know the commitments and the time bank when I'm working on my promotion calendar or a client's promotion calendar.
Walk Through Video
Just in case you'd prefer to see the key elements of a successful planning day, here's a video I created a few years ago.
Bonus: Your Content Calendar and Beyond
While not directly related to strategic planning, your content calendar is crucial. Plan out your content for the next three months, week by week. This will help you stay consistent and aligned with your goals.
Don’t Forget To Track Your Numbers
If you do not already have a stat/metric tracker in place, do that. What gets measured gets improved. Here are a few ideas of comment states:
- Website Traffic
- Email Subscribers
- Engagement
- Number of Clients
- Number of Leads
- Number of Sales
Let’s Wrap This Up:
There you have it, the ultimate guide to a successful Strategic Planning Day. Implement these five key elements, and you're heading to a thriving business. Get 'em, you've got this!
Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate you, and I hope you have a wonderful week.
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✁ Just a Snippet
Here is just a snippet of the important points, you know for the skimmer in you. 🤪
- Looking back is the best way to move forward.
- Are you still in alignment with your vision?
- What are you actually committed to doing?
- Add all the important out of office dates to your calendar
- Create a plan and commit to your success
- How do you know you’ve improved without having a business pulse with all your numbers?
- Go get ’em, tiger! You’ve got this.
