Success doesn’t happen without a plan.

Several plans, actually.

So when you sit down today to create your 2018 Money Map, you’re going to do three things:

1. Take note of all the Big Rocks that happen in 2018.

Big Rocks are all the events that have immovable dates: conferences, vacations, family obligations, etc. They include personal events as well as professional. The whole point of a plan is to make sure your business supports your life instead of takes over your life.

2. Plan Q1 Projects & Milestones to meet annual goals.

Of course, you can do the whole year, but it’s much more practical to do one quarter at a time so you can course correct as the year progresses.

Not to mention, this also builds into your plan several assessment points, instead of flying right into each quarter without a Map, Execute, Revisit process and SWOT Analyses.

3. Schedule Weekly Planning sessions.

Block out weekly 20 minute sessions (Sunday evenings or Fridays at the end of the work day) to plan in two week segments.

That way, each Big Rock, Project and Milestone has a strategic plan broken up into doable chunks that are driven by assessment and action.

What this looks like

Sit down with your numbers from 2017 and your fiscal plan and goals for 2018.

Set some measurable goals for next year: How much revenue, profit income do you want to make, how many clients, events, programs will you have, etc.

Break those numbers down into each quarter and then each month, taking into account your busy and slow times.

Now that you know what your targets are each month, what can you do to make sure you meet them?

Of course you need clients and customers, but how many people do you need to have conversations with to make those numbers?

What tasks, marketing, etc need to be scheduled for your programs to be successful? Who will you collaborate with for extra reach for big projects? How often will you have to roll out new ideas? Etc.

And for right now look only at Q1.

That’s January, February, and March that you need to plan speaking gigs, networking, book launches, marketing campaigns and promos, etc.

If you’re using speaking as a strategy for filling a course or program, you need to find and apply for gigs scheduled in the months before launch date.

If you are planning marketing campaigns, you need to decide how long they will run, so you know when to start, what dates emails and ads will run, etc.

If you are rolling out sales promos for a brick and mortar, then you need to know where they fall on the calendar and choose your themes.

Once that strategic info is laid out for the quarter, you can plan the action steps in two week increments.

Short-term goals

Now that you have the structure in place, take a look at your calendar and see what’s immediate. What do you have coming up?

You’ll be sitting down on Sunday nights and planning for the next two weeks. Not one week at a time…two. One week doesn’t give you enough of an overview and any more than that is overwhelming.

Plan on any connections you need to make (do you have a collaboration project coming up?).
Plan what tasks need to be taken care of in order to meet that Big Rock projection goal.
Plan what you need to do as a worker in your business.

Get your info together for any business development or sales calls you have to make, etc.

Sort the tasks you have to do to work ON your business.

Figure out what your team has to do and when they’ll be responsible for completion, etc.

The point here is to make sure you’ve got your tasks for the next 14 days laid out so that when you wake up each morning, you can quickly look at your day and know what your team has to deliver, and  what you have to deliver so that your business machine is running easily.

Success doesn’t happen without planning. Period. Sit down tonight and make sure you’ve got your plan ready!

Until then…stay passionate!