The Secret Sauce of Small Business Success: A New Perspective on Strategic Planning

Welcome to the Overgivers Anonymous podcast. My name is Angela Mondor, also known as the Geeky Girl. In this podcast, we’re going to be talking about some amazing things to help you get over overgiving.

And welcome to this episode of the Overgivers Anonymous podcast. I realized when I pushed play here that or record I suppose, that I’m living in Halloween because guess what? I batched these. You can do this too in your own business. You got to find out what works for you. So yeah, we’re spending November still in Halloween, which makes my heart happy because I wish Halloween lasted a heck of a lot longer than it does.

Let’s dive into this week, shall we? I want to talk to you about strategic planning. Stick with me. We’ll have fun, I promise. But I want you to think about maybe you’re feeling like this already. You’re juggling a million things and, you know, there’s a bunch of plates spinning and there’s things falling off the plates.

And that’s what running a small business is all about, right? Running a business in general is all about all of the plates spinning at the same time. But what if I could make it easier for you? Stick with me. Strategic planning was something that I didn’t used to do in my business. Surprise! But I will tell you that I had a wake up call several years ago that really led me down this garden path of saying, you know what, we need to be more aware.

This is something that’s really important. I wasn’t prepared for the following year. And so somebody had provided an opportunity. Opportunities aren’t always great, but they had provided this opportunity and said, Hey, I can make Things good for you, and I know exactly how to help you their business and just trust me and blah blah blah And I didn’t have a plan so I thought this person must know what they’re talking about and I bought into their program now It cost me about ten grand US plus travel some, cause there was some retreats.

And on top of that, I lost a whole bunch of business, so I don’t even know what the total number is, but I lost a lot of money that year, the following year after signing. And what I did learn was that if I had known where I wanted my business to go, then that opportunity I would have known was not the right one for me.

I could have looked for a different opportunity that maybe would have helped me get there. better or helped me get to where I was trying to go. So, you know, that’s why I’m so passionate about this is because as soon as I started doing that for my business, I started to reap the benefits and rewards of doing that.

And then I started to realize that neurodivergent people really, we don’t like strategic planning typically. And it’s very difficult for us to wrap our heads around. So I had to find a way that worked for me and because I love to share. I needed to share this with you guys, too. It doesn’t have to be a flog.

It doesn’t have to be, oh, it’s corporate y garbage, right? So when I’m talking about strategic planning, I’m not talking about it from that perspective. I’m talking about my own neurodivergent brain. How does it work for me, and how I can help you to have more fun, but also get the rewards from doing it for yourself, okay?

So, when I look at a strategic plan, And this will depend on you as well. For me, I like to look at the whole year. I, I generally say a year is small enough and big enough at the same time. Creating a strategic plan that’s five or six or ten years out could be very overwhelming. I know that one year even can be overwhelming, but there’s some value in it.

And so let’s just stick with it. Okay. So we’re going to talk about when we talk about a whole year, looking at what is it that you want to accomplish this year. When I talk about the strategic plan for the year, I always talk a little bit about how much money do I want to make that year? You know, from a goal perspective, where are we headed financially?

Then also we want to look at what, what changes do we want to make in the business? What are some things that are working really well versus things that we want to change? And on top of that, the fun things, what are the projects we can do? What are the things that we can introduce? Now, when you’re looking at all these things, it can be overwhelming because you’re like, ah, there’s just far too many things, Angela, like my gosh, but really, if you can just put it into containers and thinking about this looking at having options, because the way that we operate.

Typically neurodivergent people we can get bored pretty easily or we can try things and we get, we don’t like it and therefore we just won’t do it again. So we need some options in the bucket. And so what I like to do is to give myself those options in the beginning as I’m planning. So I start to think about what are the things I want to do and I let myself just go.

I let myself be wild and crazy and come up with a bunch of ideas. It doesn’t mean to say they all have to go into the strategic plan, but they’re definitely things that I’m thinking about or wondering about. And then I can test them as I go. Now each of those items can be broken down into smaller items.

The idea here is that a large goal is very difficult to come up to, to have to constantly be thinking about or wondering about. It becomes this really big. monster, really, that’s hard to think about. So when you are thinking about the things that you want to accomplish next year, don’t get stuck on how big the problem is.

Like if you’re like, I’ve currently made 20, 000 in my business, but I want to make 40, 000 next year. Or if you’re like, I’ve done 50, 000 this year, and I want to make 100, 000 next year. What I mean, whatever numbers, it doesn’t matter. Okay. But when we think about the big numbers or we think about the big projects, we can be overwhelming.

So don’t go there. Just think about the fun in it. Think about what is, what is going to be fun about getting these things done? Or what are the fun things about having these things? You know, growing your email list. Or writing a book, or creating a summit, or guesting on podcasts, or writing blog posts.

Like, what are the things that you want to do inside your business? And you don’t have to do them all, but write all the things you think you’d like to try. Okay? Let’s start there. We’re just going to try. Okay? Then, the idea here now is to look at what are the clear goals that we can come out of this.

Okay? So, obviously, we need measurable things, we need things to be able to say, did we make it or did we not? Because it’s one thing to say Oh, I’m going to write blog posts. Well, is one completing the goal is 10 is 52 is 12. Like, where is it in that line that makes you say, Oh, I’ve completed that goal.

And remember no judgment, right? It doesn’t have to be like anybody else’s. It’s completely up to you and yours and what you want to accomplish in there. So think about what you want to accomplish. And then let’s put some parameters around that. So, that’s where the clearness, the clarity comes in, right?

Saying, I’m going to make this much money. Now, some people have a hard time coming up with like, a number. And I know a lot of people that I’m working with really like the concept of good, better, best. Okay? One of my clients brought it up in one of our meetings and everybody was like, Oh my God, I love that!

So a lot of people have adopted the whole concept of the good, better, best, which is like, I want to make this much money and that’s a good goal. And then I’m going to make this much more and that’s a better goal. And this one is my best goal. Okay. So it depends on how you work for me. I’m cool setting a best goal.

And if I make more than last year, I’m cool. Right? Like I’m not worried about whether or not I hit that best one, but some people need to have that good, better, best in order to be able to say, check. Check. Oops. But I did two checks, right? So whatever works for you is what’s important here. And I know the ambiguity is kind of annoying at that point.

But really think about it as you’re doing yourself a favor. You’re doing something good for you. Because when you set these goals and they feel good to you, you’re more likely to accomplish them. And you’re more likely to actually want to put in the work to get it done. So you’re going to take the set goals.

So if you’re like, I want to write 12 blog posts. Well, that’s what Are you going to do it once a month? Is that how you want to do it? Is it, you’re going to write 12 blog posts, but you want them all delivered in one quarter? I don’t know. What does that look like for you? In our business, we do 55, 55. Ooh, that’d be a lot.

52 is a lot too. 52 blog posts. We do 52 Overgiver Anonymous episodes. We do 52 Rockstar Roadmap episodes, right? So there’s a lot of content that we do that are. Measurable based on a week, because we’re doing them weekly, right? But for us, that’s what works for us, okay? Now, when you’re thinking about all the pieces of the puzzle, and you’re thinking about where you’re going to do these things, so for example, the NeuroDivergent Summit, we’re having another one in February there’s another one coming later in the year as well, but our next one’s February, so we’re thinking about it.

Notice how I’m thinking about February, and Well, technically right now it’s November or it’s October, but it is technically November for you. So the strategic plan allows you to make sure that I’m on track to be able to accomplish things that I have planned in the future. Okay. If I didn’t. Think forward into all of those places.

I might put something in a place that doesn’t fit properly. One of the things that came up when we were talking about creating that neurodivergent summit in February was the planning of when we need speakers. Presentations by and all those sorts of things. And some of that stuff ran into other holidays and we had to move it around.

Okay. So it’s really important for you to understand that you doing these things, it’s not just about you saying, Oh, I’m going to accomplish the thing, but you’re actually able to see some pitfalls before you get there. Because if I hadn’t done this, then we’d get to the point where it’s like, okay, we’re X amount of time away from starting.

Let’s go. And we’d start running through things and go, Oh, I’m Oh no, we have a problem here. Oh, we have a problem there. So we can mitigate those things before we get there. And that’s the beauty of the strategic plan. Okay, so we take a big goal and we break it down into smaller goals. So I talk, basically, we talk about that, you know, whole yearly plan and we break it down into smaller pieces, right?

So 52 blog posts is a lot of work. Okay, but how do you break it down? Well, in, I’m looking at an October calendar, so I’ll have to use it. We lease them, we release our, our blog posts on Mondays. So there’s four Mondays in October. So that means in the month of October, I’m doing four. I don’t have a quarterly planner in front of me right now.

It’s sitting over here and I don’t want to rustle pages. But so let’s pretend that there’s four weeks in every month, which there isn’t. But if there was four Mondays in September, October and November, or sorry, October, November, December, then that would mean that I would be 12 blog posts in that quarter.

So you always take that big goal and you break it down. So we take the large yearly goal and we break it down in the quarters. Where does it fit? When are you going to do this? Because when I made some plans for the neurodivergent summit, I didn’t just go, Oh, I’m going to do two next year and leave it. I went, where do they fit?

Where do they fit for me? Where do they fit for my audience? Like, where is it going to be best that it serves both my needs in my business, but also the needs of my clients? Where are they going to need this information the most? And then I can plot it on the calendar. Okay, so you take that piece then and break it into smaller pieces.

And then you break it into smaller and smaller. So basically yearly goal, break it down into the quarters, then you take quarters, you break it down into the months. Now you don’t have to do this all at one time. The yearly strategic plan is enough. Okay, once you get the plan, then you just need to revisit every quarter and every month to break it down further.

Okay, you don’t have to do it all at one time and all in one sitting, like that’s just a nightmare waiting to happen. But planning the year puts up the foundation so that when you sit down to plan out the quarter, you know where you’re headed for the year, and then you can choose, oh, okay, this is what I’m going to do this quarter based on the goals that I have for the year, and you can lay out what that is.

And then when you do your monthly planning, you go, okay, so in this quarter I’m going to accomplish these things, these are the things I’m going to get done in this month. Okay, you with me? So we’re breaking it down into smaller and smaller pieces. By the time you get down to the month, now you’ve got a really good list of items to get done.

And you can break those down into to dos. So if I have four blog posts I have to get done this month, what are my steps? What do I have to get done for each one? And when am I going to do the work? Okay, like I said earlier at the beginning of this, I said, we batch these. So I actually will record content to the last Friday of every month.

That’s how we do it here. And so for us, that works, but for some people that doesn’t, I’ve got a client who likes to write her blog posts every single week and she likes to write it on a weekly basis and keep it fresh. And that’s cool for her, works for her business. And so when you are thinking of what works for you.

Think about where you’re best fitted and what’s your best way of accomplishing the things. There are some things that we do weekly around here. There’s some things that we do quarterly. Depends on the task and what it is we’re trying to accomplish. So the next piece to that, remember I said to you, you create that, you know, yearly plan and you break it down into the quarters.

Each time you break it down, you’re checking in. So if you create your 2025 plan, for example. Then when you sit down to break out your quarters, I hope you do it in December. I’m not shitting on you, but I like to do my quarters before the quarter starts. Just saying. So if you break out your quarter in December, then you can look at your yearly plan and go, does that still work?

Because there’s still a few months between now and then, there’s still some time, things might’ve shifted a little bit. Who knows? So you look at that first quarter of the year and go, okay, so out of my yearly plan, what is it that I’m going to accomplish in this quarter? And you write those things down.

Now you can do the monthly planning right after, if you so desire. I like to let it sit and marinate for a little bit. A couple of days later, I’ll do the monthly plan. A couple of days later, I do the monthly plan. I’m going to say that twice. Okay. So we do that yearly the quarterly plan let it sit and marinate.

And when we come back in the month, to plan the next month. So now we’re planning January at this point. We’d look at what we planned for the quarter and say, what is it that we’re going to now take out of that quarter to do in January? Because remember your quarterly plan is three months. It’s January, February and March.

So that yearly, that quarterly plan doesn’t all need to get done in January. Shocking, right? So you look into January and you say, okay, here’s, here’s what I have time for. Here’s what my parameters are allowing me for in order to accomplish. This is what is on my plate. And you can start to put down what are those plans out of those goals.

The beauty of the system is that when you’re working on the small things, The January things that break down into your weeklies. When you’re working on those small things, it’s actually rolling up to the big thing, which is your totally yearly plan. If you do this, if you consistently do this, you will hit more yearly goals than you’ve ever hit before.

Because you’re not overwhelmed by worrying about the yearly plan. You’re just worrying about the weeklies. What’s, what’s in front of my face right now? What are the things I have to do? This helps to avoid burnout. It helps you to deal with your work life balance. I hate the word balance, by the way. It’s more like flow, I suppose.

But it helps you to be able to stay clear on what’s happening. I literally had a conversation with the Rockstar Success Circle just the other day, and we were talking about planning for November, and we were talking about how many days we had available to work in November. Because we don’t think about that.

We don’t think, Oh, what do I have available to work? We just think, Oh, I’ve got a whole month. I can get a bunch of stuff done. That realization and that planning and the way, Oh, here’s what I really have time for makes a huge difference. It allows you to stop shooting on yourself, but it also allows you to be able to see what those possibilities are and give yourself some grace.

If you only have, you know, five 10 days out of 21 to work, you’re not going to accomplish as much as if you had 21 of those days to work. Okay, so that’s really important. So you’re always checking in as you move forward. You’re always not only checking your progress, hey did, you know, when you look back and say, oh, let’s recap last month so I can create the next month, right?

So if we’re in end of January now, we’re looking back on January, what did I accomplish in January before I make my February plan? So you’re celebrating, here’s the things I accomplished, woohoo, this is exciting, but then you’re also looking at where do I need to go next. So you’re rewarding yourself by saying, here’s some cool stuff I got done, right?

Then this is really good for your mental health because we are not, you’re not overwhelmed and overworked and thinking about this craziness that could happen. I really would love to make sure that, Nobody was overwhelmed by those things anymore and I know that this has helped me a lot in my business, I know it helps my clients a lot in their businesses and it really allows them to have a better flow of energy between work and their life, and life is not just one thing, life is so many things, just like our business is so many things, right?

If you say, you know what, Angela, I’d love to give strategic planning a go. I can figure out this whole plan the year thing, but I’m not sure, or you’re struggling, whatever the case may be. Know that you have an option to check out the Rockstar Success Circle. So we do have a yearly planning party, we have quarterly planning parties, and we have monthly planning parties.

Notice how I didn’t say planning sessions. Damn good time when we get together and not only that, but we also have the rockstar success planner that goes with that. My 2025 is sitting over there, but you can see a picture of it over here. The 2024, of course, we were sitting in key core of 2024 right now.

Not only that, but there’s a supportive community. And we are supportive of each other and where we’re at. And each person celebrates the success of the other. It’s such a beautiful place to be. And people are able to not only share their successes, but they’re also able to share their worries or concerns.

And there’s other people who have skills and they’re able to help them with those things as well. So, the entire community, we stay motivated together. We are in it together. And there’s the check ins, the balance. You don’t have to do it on your own anymore. We’re there for you. So you definitely want to check that out.

There’ll be a link in the show notes, but also underneath the YouTube video, you can check out. The rockstar success circle and see if it’s right for you. Our yearly planning party is coming up. So if you’re interested, you can get right in at the yearly planning. So you’re not behind but you’re never really behind because I always have a catch up video for you.

Regardless of where you are at in your journey, cause I want to make sure that you come in And just blazing to success. So the idea of strategic planning can be really overwhelming. But I hope that I’ve shown you how strategic planning can be, maybe I haven’t showed you how much fun it can be, but I hope you see that I think it’s fun.

And that maybe you’ve seen how maybe now if you do it this way, it’ll be easier for you to accomplish those goals. Or maybe I’ve shown you a way to think about strategic planning that makes you think, maybe that’s not so crappy after all. That’s all I need you to do is just, you know, get to that place.

But when you’re looking at your business and all your life and everything else that’s going on in your, in your world if I could take some of that stress out for you and make this easier, I hope that this does that for you. And then hopefully you’ll be able to look at these things and say, you know what, I, I think I can move forward with this and I understand the logic.

I’m here for you. If you need anything, please don’t hesitate to reach out. You can always email us geekygirl.ca if you’d like. And I hope to see you next time. I hope you have a fantastic week. I’ll talk to you next week.