Make a Plan and Hit the Road

The most successful people I know that are making money online had some type plan that they followed to get to where they are today. I never use to as I just went through life plodding along not knowing where life was going to take me.  If you don’t have a plan, now is the time to start.

Planning for your business is no different than the planning I did for my family’s trip to Disneyland. Here’s how it works.

You have to know where you’re starting from. In this case we’d start from our house, but on other trips there might be a different starting point.

For a business your starting point is your current business situation. What’s your competitive situation? Your financial situation? Your staffing situation?

You also need to know where you’re going. In business, this would be your goal. What do you want to be different at the end of your trip? How will you know that you’ve succeeded?

So you’ve got your starting point and your goal. Now you need to figure out how you’re going to make the trip.

What resources will you need?

If I’m driving to Disneyland, I might want to rent a van to carry my family and all our gear. Maybe it would be a good idea to get a GPS system to make sure we don’t get lost. There are two other resources to think about: money and time.

What’s the trip going to cost?

On a real trip you’ll be thinking about gas, food, hotels, park admission and other expenses. For a new web site you should be thinking about the cost to register a domain name, designing a website, hosting the website, marketing, etc…

How long will it take to make the trip?

On a road trip you want to think about how often you’ll stop and what speed you’re going to drive and where you should spend the night. For a business journey, you want to lay out the milestones that will measure your progress and serve as review and decision points.

Here’s another question that I like to ask when I’m planning a trip: What would be fun to do? There may be attractions along the way that we want to stop at. There may be things we want to plan to do at our destination. I like making a list of those as we think of them.

If you’re planning for your business ask the question this way: “What would we do if money and time were not an issue?” You’ll be amazed at how many of the things on your list turn out be possible.

Most books and articles on planning make it seem like a straight-line, one-time-through process. But no trip I’ve ever taken was like that. Neither was any business plan.

The planning process always goes around and around until things jell. That just seems to be the way it is.

And when you do hit the road, a flat tire or road construction can change your plan. So can the sight of a place you want to stop but hadn’t planned for.

Business is like that, too. You can’t plan to cover all the surprises, good and bad. So plan to be flexible.

Planning really is the key to success whether you’re driving to Disneyland or making money online. And, since you already know how to plan a trip, you won’t need any more of those fancy planning books.