Blog : Moving Forward

3 PRO TIPS TO MOVE FROM PLANNING TO ACTION

The BTS action on your business is how stuff gets moved to DONE! You and your team rolling up your sleeves and diving in. Projects to plan, deadlines to assign, and tasks to delegate. . . not to mention revenue projections, goal setting, and a company culture to support. All essential, all important. You know, it’s a glorious feeling moving those tasks to completion and celebrating your big wins each sprint.

BUT the dark side of operations and planning is that it can become a black hole that sucks you in.

How many times have you been so BTS  that you resurface and realize you need a shower, a new outfit, and maybe put on a bra? 

Listen I get it. There is no one more BTS than me. Comfy pants on, pandora going on, and planning in full action mode.

There are a few key things to have in place to keep you from setting up shop in operations and planning. We gotta get you out of uber planning mode and into action.

Here’s what I recommend to get you out of planning and into action:

  1. Plan for 90 Day Increments. You do not need to plan an entire 12m marketing plan down to each and every individual IG Story or Post. The amount of execution time you are wasting is insane if you do that. 90 Days of planning is a good sweet spot. We always have a yearly calendar, including promos per quarter and then break them down by sprint. BUT spending each and every minute planning every finite detail is just perfectionism dressed up in a cute pair of jeans and heels. PROGRESS TIP: As tasks get moved from 90 days to 60 to 30 to Current Sprint— your details and firm plans need to be decided. Important clarification: This doesn’t mean you plan for 90 then don’t plan until the next 90 rolls around. 
  2. Eliminate dry spells. It’s very easy to fall into dry spell cycles. Meaning, you are knee deep in planning then up to the elbows in implementation / forward facing / execution. And the cycle continues, creating a consistent “dry spell” of planning or implementation. You need to be doing both and making sure each are working in coordination NOT in spite of each other. You need to make sure you aren’t ONLY planning or ONLY in forward facing without a plan. PROGRESS TIP: Create regular intervals (like a designated sprint every 60 days) to plan for the next 90. Or have “pop in” days where you plan, review, then get back to your genius zone. 
  3. Create a transparent accountable system. I love that the progress boards keep everything out in the open. No separate to do lists, no hidden projects, no loopholes to get lost in. Creating a system where your team sees the big pie and their pieces naturally keeps everyone accountable and moving down the same path. PROGRESS TIP: If you are new to sprint planning, start with milestone planning. This will help show your team the milestones you’d like to hit and when so they can adjust their work accordingly. As you work together, you’ll see how much easier it is to make the transition from to do’s to task prioritization. 

It’s fun to plan, but it also can feed your excuses from going from plan to action. Whether it’s perfectionism, doubt, decision paralysis, or another insecurity. . . my goal is for you to make progress and not get lost in operations and planning.

Remember: ACTION CREATES CLARITY.

If you are have ever been lost or so inundated with BTS action. . . then getting a handle on your 90 day plan is a great place to start. You’ll not only find out how to plan your next 90 days, but you’ll always have an answer for “what do I do next?”. 

 

The 411 on Your Genius Zone (Why It Works and Doesn’t Work Too)

The 411 on Your Genius Zone (Why It Works and Doesn't Work Too)At some point you’ve heard these pieces of advice:

  1. Delegate everything and stay in your genius zone
  2. There’s only enough time in the day, be intentional and stay in your lane bro
  3. CEO doesn’t mean Chief of EVERYTHING Officer

I totally get it. These pieces of advice make a LOT of sense. If you are struggling to scale and break into that next level, you might have tried to apply one or more of these ideas. BUT delegation, genius zone, and figuring out what to work on first isn’t really as easy as it sounds. It’s easy to think there must be something wrong with YOU. Why is it so easy for everyone else? What are YOU doing wrong?

Nothing. No, I mean it. You aren’t doing anything wrong and there isn’t anything WRONG with you and there actually isn’t anything wrong with that advice. The only problem is that advice only works for SOME people but it doesn’t work for EVERYONE. And really all of those tips are theories and not as easy to implement. Like exactly how does one DELEGATE, stay in their lane, on top of it all. . . and waltz into their office with the right combo of Andy & Miranda?

This is the key difference. While other folks might preach the ‘get it off your plate’ mentality as the only path to success, it’s just not true.

If you are anything like my awesome clients, the ones that….

Create and publish magazines, books, and digital publications.
Lead thousands of women in membership sites.
Mentor, coach, and run high level masterminds.
Launch a podcast. Or maybe two.
Have 10K+ FB group members.
Walk into conferences and have immediate authority.

They ALL have found their genius zones and successfully hand off anything outside of it, but they didn’t start there and they certainly continue to have their pulse on all the things. . . without their finger in every pie.

My people (that’s you dear) tend to do better when they do things a different way.

My signature way of doing this is based on PROGRESS, basically everything I teach, preach, manage, and implement is a systematic way of planning for (and reaching) your goals, while we improve operational efficiency and scalability and minimize growing pains.

Why does this work for people like you?

Because instead of working off of a mile long list of have-to-dos or only working on the creative fun parts (while turning a blind eye to things like, I dunno REVENUE) , we focus on priorities based on goals, benchmarks, and milestones.

That’s why I created the VIP Intensive. I’m so over awesome people like you struggling to to manage #allthethings and keep shoving 100 days of work into 30, but never really getting anywhere with it and feeling like a complete loser because of it.

I wanted to create something that would work for MY type of people.

It’s 5 sprints with me as your progress guide. We dive deep. Gather facts and data. Set the goals. Break down the plan. And customize your 90 days to work for you and your team. We set you up to stay in your genius zone, slowly handing off those tasks you no longer want to handle and even help you build or train up team members.

If you’d like to…..
Set big fat audacious goals.
Carve out actual time to work on ‘one day projects’.
Have a team who has your back and buy in to your vision.
Feel accomplished at the end of every quarter.
Know what to work on and when.

This would be a good place to start. Listen, you can keep doing things the way you’ve been taught but I doubt much will change because you’ll never be the type of person those ways will work for.

You are in good company, I can’t do it either.

You’ll continue to….

STRUGGLE.
To diminish your dreams because you don’t have the right tactical plan.
Have work bleed over into your family time.
Beat yourself up because your brain is ALWAYS ON.
To see, feel, and ALLOW things to fall through the cracks.

But who wants that? Not when you can prioritize all the things into an actual plan. FINALLY stay in your genius zone, without blinders to what is happening within your business.

You can learn more here.

How to Actually Keep on Track with Your Business Goals

How to Actually Keep on Track with Your Business GoalsIf you’ve ever tried to set truly intentional, stretching, yet achievable goals for your business and not managed to reach the finish line exactly as you hoped, you are not alone. The truth is that a lot of people want to hit all the beautiful milestones they set out during all the yearly planning and annual goal setting review sessions, but not a lot of people actually do it.

With all of the goal setting journals, task managers, to do list dashboards, and even with the best dream teams. . . . Why is it STILL so hard to stay on track?

I’ve worked with a handful of seriously amazing (and crazy successful) business owners and pretty much all of them struggled with what I call #allthethings IDEA WHIPLASH. The #allthethings IDEA WHIPLASH is something all creatives tend to experience and it goes a little like this:

Here are my goals for Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4.
Offerings are XYZ, ABC, and 123.
Marketing for XYZ starts in February Q1.
Whoa, that sounds sooo cool.
Let’s do it.
Let’s move this, that, and that other thing so we can make room for this new amazing thing.
You bet we need a new funnel and marketing graphics
And #allthethings.
2 weeks to 1 month later.
Hold up yo.
I think I like XYZ better now.
Yes, for sure. Let’s go with that.
AND repeat.

Seem familiar? This happens a lot, especially for big dreamin’ creatives. What can you do about it? I’ve got 5 things you can do right now if you want to keep on track with your goals and keep your #allthethings IDEA WHIPLASH to a minimum.

#1) Accept that there is absolutely opportunity cost for new ideas.

Yes, you may be missing out on the next hot thing, but if you’ve set serious financial, growth, and personal goals you need to accept that the opportunity cost is 100% real. You may miss out, but you could hit it out of the park with your original (even refined) idea/s.

#2) Invest in some outside help to setting and PLANNING for these goals.

Sometimes I see business owners fall into #allthethings IDEAS WHIPLASH by default, simply because they have just come up with IDEAS and the when they’d like to meet it (like in 20K in Q2 by selling XYZ) but without actual plans to achieve these goals. Once you see a tactical plan (marketing, numbers, and projects), the idea / offer / promotion feels more “real”. You see the actual way to get there.

#3) Create actual milestones and analyze the heck out of it.

If you break down those quarterly goals into milestones (like in a sprint) it should help you see if your team’s work is really getting you closer to the goal. Benchmarks and milestones are so important and keeps the ping pong idea whiplash minimized. Here’s your out: After comparing your work to your goal/benchmark/milestone and you still feel kinda weird about the goal. . . then maybe it’s time to move on. You’ll have more idea remorse if you haven’t worked on it vs. leaving the idea by choice (backed up by facts).

#4) Set a GET OUT OF JAIL FREE card for these goals.

Much like #3, if you are working towards a goal that involves a lot of new work, refining, or potentially many more hours to finalize, set a date by this time if we have completed: a, b, and c then we will proceed. If we have not, then we can shelve this idea and adjust our marketing or financial goals. I love this because it allows you to lead your team towards those big visions and goals, but it also lets you have a pass if it simply looked good on paper but not in reality.

#5) Refine, adapt, and adjust. Remember– you set those goals in a business vacuum.

While yes, you took time to analyze and objectively look at your business- your business is a living breathing extension of your life and family. Things happen. Goals change. Major life moments affect our quarter-to-quarter projections. That means you have control (and the OK) to change or alter the goals.

If you do those 5 things, you WILL keep on track with your goals. It’s a process I’ve taken both large and small businesses through and every single one of my clients end up exceeding their goals and keeping their teams happy by avoiding #allthethings IDEA WHIPLASH. Sure, you can do this alone but if you are really serious about setting intentional goals, you can’t keep doing things the way you’ve done before.

Sign up for Your Progress Gameplan. It’s the best way to see how this crazy method Progress System works and helps keep you on track towards your goals.