Planning: A Necessity

Following with our current track of Doing It Afraid you will need to plan and then plan again redo the previous planning and then do it again. You can never plan enough.

A wise man once said:

“Plans are nothing; Planning is everything.” ~Dwight D. Eisenhower

And if he never said anything else true that truly was. You will never get enough planning. You can start out small with nothing more than a notebook and some colored tabs. All the way until you have a full strategic plan fully colored and branded. Either way, planning is essential.

Well you say “OK I agree with you planning is important. But how do I start? Well, you are in luck if you have been following our Doing It Afraid track you have already started and you didn’t even know it. Unbeknownst to you, you have already completed Step One and Step Two in the process (Summary Below.) But now you need to work on Step Three which is filling in the blanks. You will need to focus on the When, Where, How and if you are working with a team you will need to fill in the Who as well.

Step Three: The Details When, Where, How and maybe Who

With the first two steps, you have completed the background work that you need to work on Step 3. This can be organized and completed in many ways but my favorite strategy is to take my Mind Map and written out SMART BHAG and write it across the top of the page.

After I have done that, I create a table (written or computer generated) and jot some notes down about when I want to accomplish my SMART BHAG breaking it down into smaller time periods. For example, with our SMART BHAG, we have a long time period of ‘within 5 years of production'. But in this step, we will break it down into individual years or even into Phases with specific time periods.

An example of Writing out the Details

You can fill in locations that you have considered, properties being considered for purchase, resources, and contacts that need to be included/ consulted before during or after purchase.

The 'How' can include a myriad of things but in our scenario, I would include items such as my buying capital. Savings that I may have available that I will be able to invest in my product or company. Any pre-approval loan amounts that I have, and any investors that have already materialized.

In our example since we are a one-man operation for the moment, there is no need to fill out Who but who knows in the future it may be needed.

Thanks for the Read and if you have not already don’t forget to subscribe!!!!! And check out my business website New Leaf Consulting

~Alyshia A.

Summary of Doing it Afraid Steps 1 & 2

Step One: Write Out Your Ideas

• Mind Map

• Starbursting

• Vision Board

IDEA: Sell amazing Blue Apples

Step Two: Make sure it is a SMART BHAG

Goal: Create a company to sell amazing blue apples.

BHAG: Create a company that will sell 20,000 bushels of amazing blue apples.

SMART BHAG: Create a company that will sell 20,000 bushels of amazing blue apples per year within five years of production.

• Specific: Sell amazing blue apples

• Measurable: 20,000 bushels

• Attainable: within five years of production

• Relevant: selling the product of our company

• Time-Based: per year

• BHAG: No one has sold amazing blue apples before, but at 20,000 bushels per year we would be selling the average amount of apples that traditional apple producers sale each year within 5 years.