Do you remember when you were younger and getting together with your friends you’d ask “hey, so what’s the plan?” And usually there wasn’t one but you’d all come up with something.

It’s not a bad strategy when you are a teenager but it’s a terrible one if you are a business owner. No plan, no success. I should know, I spent a lot of time doing things with no real plan. Oh sure, I thought I had a plan, I would do a little social media, blogging, networking and other business building tasks but that was only because that was what I thought I should do because others either said to do it or were doing it. (Gee, as I write this I’m realizing I wasn’t that far removed from what goes on in high school.)

Then one day it hit me, I wasn’t getting where I wanted to go because I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t have a step by step plan of the things I would do that would bring me what I wanted. When I think of the elite athletes and successful business owners and businesses each one had a plan that laid out what to do first, second and so on.

I realized that building a business was much like building a brick and mortar building. There are separate contributions from many areas and they all need to fit together as one. And to do that, each has to be executed precisely in coordination. In some cases, in order to reach a goal there are certain pieces that need to be done before others.

Once I realized this, that everything comes together to make the whole the results start happening. Oh and another thing I learned was that I wasn’t necessarily the best person for all of the jobs. In order to reach my goals I needed to delegate, sometimes delete and always be open to course correcting.

Now, to this day, before I do anything in my business I either get out a checklist (if it’s something I’ve already done) or I create a step by step plan (and turn that into a checklist) so that I always know what to do and when to do it. This helps me reach my end result faster and with a lot less stress.

It’s become a game of sorts, I love to plan so I get to do what I love and then I love to see results of that plan, so by taking the steps in between (the meat of the matter so to speak), I work my plan and see my results!

Where are you failing to plan? And more importantly, what do you want to do so that you succeed? As Winston Churchill said, “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. I know you don’t want that. So hop on over to my Facebook page and tell me your tips for planning or what one step you will commit to after reading this.