Hey there! Making mistakes is possibly the greatest teaching mechanism in life. Mistakes have consequences, usually bad ones, and we want to avoid them. However, another great way of learning is by listening to the mistakes of others. That’s why today we’re gonna talk about our personal experience. We will be sharing the consequences of a big mistake that we made in the beginning: not having a plan. So be ready for this, fasten your seat belts, and let’s dive in.
Lack of Direction
There was once a very naive and innocent Geeky Girl who did not have a plan. She met a seller who told her about this year-long program that could take her business to another level. The innocent Geeky girl bought the program only to realize nine months later that her business was farther apart from what she wanted it to be, and closer and closer to the bottom.
A plan is a compass. Even though you do have a destination in your mind, without a compass, you don’t know which direction to take. That is what happened to us long ago. Without the vision to understand that that program was not at all fit for our business, we believed in it and wasted months of work on something that led us in the opposite direction from where we wanted to go.
The lack of direction is exactly what put us through a bad decision. Not seeing the direction you need to go, anyone can convince you that their path is the right one to take. A plan could prevent all of this by allowing you to see that whatever someone is telling you isn’t what your business needs to go forward.
Wasted Resources
Not only time was wasted when we bought a program that didn’t work. Directly, it cost us 10,000 dollars. Yeah, it wasn’t a cheap mistake. Especially because, due to the poor performance of our business, more money was lost. The amount of resources wasted in this exchange was certainly more than enough to help Geeky Girl reach the next level.
A plan, here, is nothing more than resource management. Sure thing, it might take a bit to sit down and calculate some numbers or research alternatives, but the amount that you will invest doing that is not comparable to the amount you would waste in a bad decision.
And we know that this sounds scary, managing money is scary. Math is complicated. But you don’t need to be a specialist to do that. We’re not talking about having every single penny calculated, it’s a simple matter of putting the pros and cons on a scale and weighing them properly. The plan is merely the scale.
Missed Opportunities
There are lots of shiny objects out there, but we cannot carry all of them at the same time. This is yet another benefit of having a plan, which here works as… well… a planner! As you were able to see in the innocent Geeky Girl’s story, you should think carefully before embracing any opportunity that appears in your way.
Mainly, you can separate the opportunities into three types: fit, future fit, and doesn’t fit. Keep those in mind whenever you see any opportunity. We’ve talked about what can happen when you take an opportunity that doesn’t fit. The same can happen if you take an opportunity at the wrong moment. Don’t be afraid to postpone something to a better moment, it’s better to wait than to turn a future fit into a bad decision.
You also should be wary of taking too many opportunities at a time for it can cause problems as big as, or maybe even worse, than the bad decisions. Besides wasting time and resources, you could overwhelm yourself and/or your team members, accomplish nothing, and even close some doors that you would have if you just waited for the right moment.
Increased Risk
Risking being repetitive here – take it as emphasis – you can’t get where you want if you don’t know the path and, therefore, you risk getting lost. Here, more than a compass, a plan is a map. The path to success is not a straight line, you will need to take paths that don’t point in the right direction. The plan is there to show you if they make a curve to your destination or if it just goes farther and farther away.
Sure, it’s not an easy-to-read map, we can’t see the future. However, it highlights important checkpoints that you have to pass to get to your destination. Taking a path will only make sense if it, at least, points towards one of those checkpoints.
If you see an opportunity that costs 10,000 dollars, that goes in the opposite direction of where you wanna go, and it doesn’t pass through any of the checkpoints you need to pass, then it’s a bad decision for you to take that opportunity. The plan is the tool that shows you all of that.
Difficulty in Measuring Progress
Alright, we talked about a plan being a compass, we talked about a plan being a map, why not turn it into a GPS already? If you have a plan, you can locate yourself in your own progress and see if you’re stuck in the same place, closer to your goal, or completely lost. Your plan gives you tangible signs, those checkpoints we were talking about earlier, to help you assess the results of your actions.
Your plan should involve metrics. Which ones depend on what you are trying to achieve, they could be finanacial metrics as a quarterly or early financial goal, or they might be audience metrics or maybe the amount of content you are creating. The point of the matter is, put a number to it, determine the actions you need to take to get to that number, and then you have ruler! You know what you did and where you got you, so you also have an idea on how to course correct to get to the right place.
Now, if you don’t have a plan, you risk not only getting lost, but you might not even know that you’re lost in the first place! Planning is a skill like any other, and the first step to learning any new skill is first recognizing that you are failing at it! If your plan shows you that you are doing all the wrong things, THAT IS GREAT! Now you know! And once you know you can fix it.
Years ago we made a mistake. We didn’t have a plan and that led us to a bad decision. Take this as an opportunity to learn from our mistakes. Spare some time to plan ahead, you might see that it will be a guide into a better position for your business. And if you need help with that, perhaps we can help too. Take a look at our planner and all the benefits of the Rockstar Success Circle, a planning program to help business owners set course to their success.
