If that sounds like you, take a deep breath. Today, we're making strategic planning so simple that anyone can follow it. This is your blueprint for planning without the overwhelm—so you can stop winging it and start feeling confident again.

If your business growth is unimportant to you, you’ll be stuck in your online business. Put on your CEO hat and be the person your future self will be proud of. (:

It may be me, but I think it's a good idea to go refill that coffee mug, and let's dive in.

Why You Need a Strategic Planning Day

Your business growth depends on strategic thinking. If you're serious about your business success, a Strategic Planning Day should be on your calendar every quarter. This focused time allows you to step into your CEO shoes.

I think you'll agree with me when I say that business leaders set time aside for strategic thinking. When you have a set process for your strategic planning meeting, you won't 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, trying to keep the wheels on the bus. At the end of the day, you fall into bed exhausted from running an online business, taking care of your family, and creating consistent, organic content marketing. It's a lot.

But here's the good news: You're not alone, and the solution is dedicating time to your strategic direction.

Your Free Planning Workbook

As an Online Business Manager (OBM), I've helped business owners set up strategic planning processes that drive real results. I set aside time with the owner every quarter for a business strategy meeting.

I understand that your small company may not be ready for a dedicated OBM as one of your team members. With that in mind, I created my most popular free resource—a planning workbook. It's like a one-day strategy meeting in a box.

It is 50 pages chock-full of all the prompts you need for strategy planning in your business. With the workbook and accompanying email series, you can create your repeatable strategy process.

Grab your copy of the planning workbook here!

Create a Distraction-Free Zone

Do you want to know what you must do first? You should put time on your calendar for your successful strategic planning session. While you are at it, why not set aside time for the whole year of strategy sessions and, of course, time at the end of the year for your annual plan.

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 that you focus on your business and where you're going in the next 12 weeks.

Before you start, make sure 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.

Here is your strategic planning agenda:

1. Reflection and Self-Assessment (15 minutes)
2. Your Vision
3. Goals (One, One, and One)
4. Project Planning
5. Content Planning

Step 1: Start with Reflection—Your 15-Minute Reset

Let's start with reflection. Before you roll your eyes, stick with me. This doesn't need to take an hour. Give yourself 15 minutes with a notebook and answer these three questions:

• What worked?
• What didn't work?
• What did I learn?

That's it. Even big companies pay thousands of dollars for this step. You can do it in 15 minutes with a quiet cup of coffee.

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.

Self-Assessment: How Happy Are You, Really?

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.

Rank your happiness (1-10) in these areas:

• Money
• Personal Growth
• Self Care (Mind, Body, Spirit)
• Family and Friends
• Love and Relationships
• You Time (Fun and Leisure)
• Home Environment
• Business

SWOT Analysis

A previous client won a two-day strategic planning day with Cameron Herold in a silent auction. One of my key takeaways was the importance of conducting a SWOT Analysis—assessing your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

While larger companies use this often, small business owners rarely take the time for this kind of deep analysis. It's crucial for identifying what's working, where you need to improve, and what external factors could impact your business growth.

I highly recommend incorporating a SWOT Analysis into your quarterly planning process. We used different color sticky notes for each of these areas. Remember that every idea is a good idea when you're having a brainstorming session, until it's not.

If you want to go deeper, you can use the self-assessment in my free planning workbook, but the simple version is more than enough for today.

Step 3: Simplify Your Goals (One, One, and One)

This is the step where so many women get stuck because we overthink everything. So let's make it simple:

• One big goal for the year
• One clear focus for the next 90 days
• One small focus for the next 30 days

One, one, and one. If you only remember that, you are ahead.

What strategic goals did you set on your last strategy day? I'm curious: Were you able to reach the desired outcome you've set for yourself in the past quarter?

Now, let's break your vision down into actionable goals. Think about:

• Your top 3 business, personal, and financial goals
• What you're fully committed to achieving
• How to turn those commitments into results

The 12-Week Year Method

If long-term goals make you lose steam, use the 12-Week Year method. Treat the next 12 weeks like it's its own year. It keeps you moving because the finish line is closer.

Have you read the book The 12-Week Year? This approach allows you to accomplish more in less time by focusing on 12-week cycles instead of traditional annual goals. The idea is to treat each 12 weeks as a full year, increasing urgency and execution.

If you find that a year plan doesn't work for you and you lose steam, why not give this a try?

Goal Breakdown:

• One-Year Goals (Big-picture milestones)
• 90-Day Goals (Quarterly objectives that feed into your one-year goals)
• 30-Day Focus (Immediate steps to move your business forward)
• 12-Week Sprint (A focused plan to drive real momentum in a short time frame)

What Are You Truly Committed To?

Always step back and ask yourself: What are you truly committed to?

If you are not committed, it won't happen. That's the truth. I had to learn that one the hard way, and I talk about it with my clients as well.

Do you want to know why I believe in this question of true commitment? It is because I've found myself chasing someone else's dream for my life. I'm sure you can guess how this turned out for me.

Maybe, like me, you've doubted your vision for your life and somehow following someone else's dream felt a little less scary.

Remember, God puts dreams on our hearts for us to follow. I think almost as a way to challenge us to release the outcome into his hands.

Step 4: Break That Goal Down into Tiny Steps

This is where your plan becomes real, but let's keep it simple.

Start with the end result and work backwards. Ask yourself what needs to happen right before that, and then what needs to happen before that? Write it all down. Don't judge. And don't organize it yet. Just get it out of your brain—what you think needs to happen step by step.

Then—this is the part where people skip—you actually need to set dates to all of those small steps.

If It's Just You and Your Business

If it's just you in your business, great. That makes assigning tasks so much easier because you know you are the one that's gonna be doing the work.

Friend, make sure you are honest about your time bank.

• How many days are your kids home?
• What holidays are coming up?
• When are you taking time off?

Don't plan your quarter in a fantasy world. Plan it for the life you actually live.

Your time bank is part of your strategy. It's not an obstacle.

Map Out Important Dates

As I mentioned, you must understand your time bank for the quarter. How many hours do you 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 your brain tells 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 projects. When you do this, you're not sitting at your desk wondering what you must 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.

Who, What, and When

Sit down and do a whole mind sweep of every step you think you must do to achieve that goal. Once you have it, you want to map it out with who's responsible.

Suppose it's only you in your business. Well, you'll be the only one doing the work. If you have an entire team working with you, who are the team members 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 what, and the when documented, preferably in a project management tool like Asana, Trello, or Notion.

All the action steps are assigned a date by knowing the end date and reverse engineering the time frame.

We tend to underestimate the amount of work and time something will take to get done. Make sure to give yourself grace.

One Major Project at a Time

Depending on your goals, 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 are the ground rules that I set with my clients: During a set period of time, you get only one major project to focus on. Why? You have a finite amount of time and energy.

A great way to add stress, overwhelm, and anxiety is by thinking it is a good idea to, let's say, be remodeling your house while prepping and executing a new course launch.

Here is an example of how to set up an Asana Board for Goals and Quarterly Planning:

Step 5: Your Content Planning for 90 Days

Your content has to match your goals. If you are launching something, your content needs to lead towards that. If you are list building, your content should support that as well.

But I want to simplify this for you:

Plan one type of content per week for the next 12 weeks.

You do not need Pinterest, email, Instagram, YouTube, a blog post, a podcast, and five reels every week. That's where burnout happens.

Start with one. When that feels solid, add another.

While not directly related to strategic planning, your content calendar is crucial for the long-term organic marketing of your business. Plan out your content for the next three months, week by week. This will help you stay consistent while keeping content aligned with your revenue goals and strategic objectives.

What to Do With All That Content

Once you do this planning day, you'll notice something. Having clarity makes content so much easier, but creating that content can still feel like a lot.

That's why my done-for-you repurposing exists. You stay focused on your clients and I make sure your wisdom doesn't get buried inside your podcast episodes or videos. That way, you're visible, consistent, omnipresent—I think I've heard that before—and not stretched too thin.

Don't Forget to Track Your Numbers

And track your numbers, even if it's messy.

• Website traffic
• Email subscribers
• Social media engagement
• Number of Clients
• Number of Leads
• Number of Sales

What you measure actually will improve.

If you do not already have a stat/metric tracker in place, do that. Here is a link to my other popular free resource, a Google Sheet to keep track of all your business metrics or key performance indicators (KPI).

Time to Wrap This Up

So friend, head to the blog for all the details from today's episode and the link to my free quarterly planner so that you can walk through each one of these steps every quarter on repeat.

You don't have to figure it out alone. Everything is already in there. Yes, it's like 50 pages long. Sorry about that. Sorry, not sorry. Maybe.

But friend, you don't have to be great at planning or time management to build a business that honors your calling. You just need a simple system that works for the season that you're in.

Strategic planning isn't just about setting goals—it's about having a proactive approach to business growth. Whether you dream of leading an executive team, collaborating with board members, or keeping it simple as a solo entrepreneur mapping out your next move, sufficient time spent on planning can be the most important time you invest in your business.

By treating this as a strategy away-day, you'll align your mission statement, address key issues, and generate new ideas that fuel new investments. With a clear vision and a collaborative effort, your strategic planning sessions will become a roadmap for continued success.

Now, take a moment to reflect on the main benefits of this approach:

• Are you still in alignment with your vision?
• What are you actually committed to doing?
• Have you scheduled your strategy discussions?
• Are you tracking your progress?

The right people and different teams thrive when there's clarity and a plan in place.

You are doing better than you think. I pray this brings you clarity and peace in your business today.

Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate you and I hope you make it a wonderful week.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

• Grab your free Planning Workbook here
• Book a 1-Hour Virtual Strategy Session
• Learn about Done-For-You Repurposing Services