Your Success Plan Made Simple

While I’d love to coach you to success – I’m going to give you the very simple planning process that I personally use…with no sales pitch attached and all right here so you can go through in just a few short minutes.

The Simple Success Planning System

The first thing that we all need to accept is that we’re all busy…but usually we’re busy just doing the things needed to get through the day rather than the things that will move us toward our Ideal Business as quickly as we’d like.

To avoid that, we need to plan how to move things forward in a simple process that actually has real world benefit.

So what each of us is going to do is set aside about an hour (no more than 90 minutes) for developing our business growth plan and the strategy we’re going to use to make it happen.

Pull out a single sheet of paper, we’re each going to answer these 3 questions:

1. Where do you want to go?
2. Where are you now?
3. How will you get from here to there?

Once we answer those questions we’re equipped with everything we each need to take our businesses to the next level.

Question One: Where do you want to go?

For me this encompasses my Vision…what I want to be known for…and my Yearly Objectives…how I will measure success.

Here are 4 simple questions to help you figure out your Vision:

1. How good do you want to be?
2. What are you providing?
3. Who do you serve?
4. What is the geographic scope of your business?

My Vision is to be the World’s #1 Solution For Helping Fitness Entrepreneurs to Build Their Ideal Businesses.

Objectives are measures of your success and your business performance.

To list your objectives:

1. Determine what you will measure. Keep it simple and straightforward.
2. Decide how you will measure it.
3. Describe specifically what the target is for each measure.

Below are some examples I used for mine:

• 1000 Members in Virtual Fitness Mastermind
• Increase Avg. Monthly Revenue by 25% While Maintaining Current Profit Margin
• Increase Newsletter Subscriber Base By 33%

Question Two: Where are you now?

Once we’ve figured out where we want to go we need to get clear about where we are today and what has to change for us to get to where we aspire to be.

For each of us there are probably a bunch of little things standing between us and our Ideal Businesses – but for the purposes of planning we’re going to focus on the 20% that will give us the 80% of the results we’re looking for.

So in your business:

What has to change in your Marketing to hit your goals?

What has to change in your Selling to hit your goals?

What has to change in your Personnel to hit your goals?

What has to change in the Experience you provide to hit your goals?

What has to change in the Training you deliver to hit your goals?

What has to change in your Business Management & Finances to hit your goals?

What has to change in YOU to hit your goals?

Now, once you’ve written down those things that need to change, go through and rank them in order of importance. Then, starting at the top of the list – start thinking about what strategy would directly address and resolve that issue for you.

Keep that strategy list handy because you’ll need it soon.

Here are some examples based on my answers to question one:

• Not enough consistency with paid traffic.
• Not enough paths of entry to VFM.
• Not enough Content Marketing.
• Not enough ‘Non-Course’ Products.
• My ‘Division 3’ is not developed enough.
• Not ‘sharp enough’ at video, speaking.

Question Three: How will you get from here to there?

This is where we develop our Action Plan…a combination of our Strategies and our Priorities. Our Strategies are crucial because they give us the focus and clarity we need to set our Priorities by serving as the bridge from where we are to where we want to be.

Here’s a simple way to get clear on your Strategies:

Desired Outcome [by] Strategic Decisions / Actions

Here’s an example:

Increase Referrals [by] Implementing 3 Evergreen Referral Programs

Or…

Improve Coaching We Deliver [by] Providing Better In-House Staff Development

Once we’ve decided on our strategies, all that remains is to set priorities – to decide which Specific Actions we’ll take and when we’ll take them by. Now the trick is to focus on the action and ideally the completion of the task or project by a specific date.

Here are a few examples of Priorities:

• Launch a Point-of-Sale Referral Campaign by February 1st.
• Complete a Public Speaking Course by May 1st.
• Have a Paid Traffic Plan in Place that yields 50 Opt-Ins per Week by March 1st.

I try to limit the number of Priorities to about 5 per Quarter as we only ‘get paid for done.’

And with that we’re done.

The real strength of this sort of approach is that it makes your business growth plan come to life.

A good way to keep the plan current is to follow this kind of pattern: Sometime this week complete the planning approach I just listed…then every 12 weeks or so, review and reset priorities…and celebrate progress.

And that’s your Simple Success Planning System.

Nothing too complicated – but it’s really effective. And if you’re using our Ideal Business Game plan approach (the overall planning system we use to create our Ideal Businesses) – then this is a great yearly update.

So now, go put this into action.