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Want to know how to create a 90-day plan for your business? Planning as a business owner is so important to ensure you use your resources (time, money, people) in the best way possible. If you\u2019ve come across the idea of 90-day planning and want to give it a go for yourself, then you are in the right place. Keep on reading to find out how to create a 90-day plan for your business.<\/p>\n
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This page may include affiliate links, which means that if you choose to make a purchase, I may earn a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Please note: This is a simplified 90-day planning process as this blog post has been created for primarily for solo and micro service-based business owners.<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Before I share how to create a 90-day plan for your business I want to quickly discuss 90-day planning versus annual planning. I am a big fan of BOTH types of planning. There are some business owners who have an annual plan and then feel this means they don\u2019t need a 90-day plan as well, but I disagree with.<\/p>\n Annual planning is really important and I talk about this mo here \u2013 The importance of annual planning as a small business owner.<\/a> Annual planning gives you the opportunity to think big and set the overall focus for the year. This is especially important when you want to make significant changes in your business such as pivoting niche, introducing new services, growing your team etc. Most of these changes require more than 3 months and so by taking the time to plan annual you\u2019ll be able to plot when in the year and how long those changes may take. However, on the whole annual planning is fairly topline. When I work with clients timeline activity is limited to plotting on a month-by-month basis.<\/p>\n Whereas the beauty of 90-day planning is that with a smaller timeframe you can plan in more detail. It is feasible to plan on a week-by-week basis, which is why it is great to maximising productivity and ensure you use your resources (time, money, people) as efficiently as possible.<\/p>\n To reiterate I am a big fan of both. In an ideal world I recommend that once a year you take a day out to do your annual plan \u2013 which is why I offer one-to-one Strategy Days<\/a> where I take business owners through my annual planning process. Then this should be supported by taking a few hours once every 90 days to put together a 90-day plan.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n For this step I am assuming that you have got some annual goals. If you are starting a 90-day plan without any annual goals then stop and set some (You can read this to help you \u2013 How to set business goals<\/a><\/em>). Having a bigger picture before you start 90-day planning is key because the point is that when these 90 days are over you are closer to achieving your annual goals.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n If you had a 90-day plan for the last 90 day you can refer back to that, but even if you didn\u2019t you can still review the last 90 days. Look back at what you did and what the results were. If you set goals did you achieve them. If you didn\u2019t try to work out why. There is a big difference between not taking action and not achieving a goal versus taking action and still not achieving a goal. Getting a clear picture of where your business is right now, and why, is important.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Now it\u2019s time for the fun to begin and it all starts with having clear 90-day goals. On the whole your 90-day goals should be aligned with your annual goals, but it may be that you also have a wildcard in there too.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n There are a number of ways to approach setting your 90-day goals if you have an annual goal. For example, if we look at revenue. Say you set your business the revenue goal of 150K. Now you could simply take your annual goal, divide it by 4 and then use that figure for your 90-day goal. So in this case that would be 37.5K. However, for most businesses that isn\u2019t the best way to approach setting your 90-day goal. You need to think about the time of year, allow for seasonality and then set the goal accordingly. If you are coming into a peak moment for your business you might aim for 50K or 60K, whereas if you know it is a low period you might aim for 25 or 30K.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Breaking down numerical goals is one thing, but what if you\u2019ve got a goal that isn\u2019t numerical. In that case it might be that you have a specific action for the goal. For example, if you set yourself the goal of launching a new offer and generate 50K by the end of the year and right now the offer doesn\u2019t even exist for your 90-day goal it might be to create and launch your new offer.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n And as I said sometimes a wild card goal might come in too. Something that might not have even been on your radar at the begining of the year might be of interestt now. Having one wildcard goal is fine. But remember in an ideal world the less goals you can have the better.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Once you\u2019ve got your goals you should look over them and try and ensure they are as SMART as possible. SMART stands for\u2026<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n When working with clients I always ask them \u2018Will it be clear if you\u2019ve achieved the goal?\u201d. If the answer is yes then you\u2019ve done enough and you can move on to planning.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n90-day planning versus annual planning<\/h2>\n
HOW TO CREATE A 90-DAY PLAN FOR YOUR BUSINESS<\/b><\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n
Step 1: Refer back to your annual goals<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Step 2: Review the last 90 days<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Step 3: Set your 90-day goals<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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