Over my 12 years of being in business, and speaking with many, many business owners over that time, I’ve discovered that when it comes to creating a strategic business and marketing plan for their business, these business owners typically fall into one of these four camps:
The Perfectionist Camp. These business owners plan everything in minute detail and won’t dive in until everything is perfect. They constantly tweak, change, and revisit their plan. The problem with this approach is that it will never be perfect. Your business plan won’t ever be perfect, so you may as well just start now and get going. You can always tweak/change/update as you go along.
The BSO Camp. These business owners are constantly distracted by Bright Shiny Object syndrome, never finishing one project before moving on to the next. The problem with this approach to running your business is that you never get anything done. Nothing ever gets implemented. No results (or very lackluster results) are ever seen. So there’s no real business growth and everything becomes confusing and overwhelming.
The Boxing-Myself-In Camp. Then there’s the business owner who won’t create a business plan because, if they do, they feel they’ll be boxing themselves in and missing out on opportunities that arise. The problem with this approach is that by not having a business you don’t have any real roadmap for growing your business; nothing is done in a very strategic way. And the irony is, you do end up missing out on opportunities because you don’t have a point of reference for anything that you do.
The Don’t Know What To Do Camp. And finally there’s the business owner who simply doesn’t know what to do. They’re very confused by all the different elements of online business management and really don’t know where to start when it comes to running to their business. They don’t know what their starting point should be. Because they don’t know where to start, it’s really hard for them to create a strategic business and marketing plan that is going to work for them.
Despite all of these different scenarios there is one thing in common. Without a strategic business and marketing plan in place, it’s going to be very difficult to grow your business and sustain it over the long-term. Opportunities will be missed. Revenues will be lost. And you’ll have no benchmark with which to gauge your success by.
This is why it’s so important you spend a little time planning out what you want for your business. And I recommend to business owners who have never created a plan before that the first start with a 90-day business plan. Even by creating a plan that focus on a shorter timeframe, it will provide them with the much-needed structure in which to grow their business.
