Planning and Preparation

Everyone would more than likely agree that one of the major keys to success for anything in life is a healthy dose of planning and preparation. This is especially true of professional business endeavors.

Of course, there are other elements that matter in making your business and life successful, such as organization and taking action on the things you’ve planned and prepared for. But laying a solid foundation from the beginning creates a linear path to success. 

In short, planning is the responsible course of action if you truly want your business to flourish, rather than leaving things to chance, or merely hoping they will succeed. 

Benefits of Planning

If you’re a seasoned business owner and it’s not your first rodeo, mapping out an elaborate business plan might not be at the top of your to-do list. But might we suggest for a second that planning is in fact for everyone, and here’s why: 

• You can generate information and perhaps gain new insight into your business model and how to be successful into the future
• It might bring to the surface and challenge previous biases you may have held about your business, team, or yourself 
• Planning appropriately can illuminate areas of improvement and identify skills that may need to be further developed 
• Having a plan allows you to strategize once and follow a course of action without spending extra time revisiting the data and designing an approach each time you need to execute

How to Prepare 

Preparation and planning go hand in hand. To be well-prepared is to put in a significant amount of work planning, depending on the task at hand. But it’s always a good idea to: 

1. Set goals! This is one of the most exciting aspects of planning, and you can watch your dreams and visions come alive in the process. Be realistic but also bold about what you plan to accomplish in the short and long-term. Then get after it. 
2. Cover all your bases. This entails mapping out what the end result will be (the goal), planning backwards by assessing all the aspects needing to be handled all the while, and thinking through every touch point or benchmark along the way.
3. Plan for things to not go according to plan. Of course, if things are failing left and right, it would be beneficial to delve deeper and figure out why. Hopefully most everything does go smoothly! Having a backup plan ensures that your business won’t be compromised when things get challenging, and that if things do, you’ll have the mental capacity to tackle them head on. 
4. Good things take time. This has been drilled into our heads for years now. Give your business the respect and attention it deserves by spending the quality time to plan ahead and execute your plans well. 
5. Be proactive. Maybe this means planning out your whole year in advance, or maybe it means planning ahead one quarter, or even one week. By getting ahead in the planning stages, you’ll have more bandwidth to tackle other business responsibilities while following the plan you’ve already developed. 
6. Remember no one but you will exercise the same amount of care into your endeavors as you will. Plan like mad to make sure you stay sharp and at the top of your game and respective market. 

Planning does not mean predicting the future and knowing everything before it happens. And actually, part of entering into entrepreneurship is signing on to the fact that it’s nothing short of a grand adventure.

As always, we have control over our attitude and our effort. Dedicating time to plan and prepare will always lend itself to future success and if nothing else, several learning experiences along the way. This helps to produce a more fruitful outcome for all.

This article was written by our very own Megan Carter. Learn more about Megan here.