Are you set for success?
I’ve just returned from a well-earned break with friends and family over the Christmas period, including a trip to Hyde Park for the Winter Wonderland. It was a fabulous day apart from my wallet now being in intensive care!
I feel refreshed, revived and raring to get on with delivering my ambitious plans (for 2017). Is that how it was for you? Or did you dread the thought of the alarm going off on Tuesday?
If that’s how you feel, you won’t be alone. Despite being ranked in the top five in a national league table of cities for start ups, business failure rates in Leeds are worse than the national average.
More than half of new businesses in this area don’t get to the five-year mark, so it’s more important than ever not to think you can sleepwalk your way to success. Hope is NOT a strategy that delivers results.
What exactly is the perfect plan?
It’s January, so the ideal time for starting as you intend to go on; setting your goals for the year and planning how these will be achieved. If you have a business plan already, you are one of only 25% of SMEs that have one written down. Maybe you had to do one for the bank or you read online that having a plan puts you on the fast-track to business success. It might sit on a shelf in your office, or it might be wholly in your head.
Having a plan is a good start, but only by having the right plan will you create the business and lifestyle you crave, and be set for success. So, let me ask you:
- Does your business deliver you the work-life balance you thought it would, or are you working more hours than ever?
- Do you pay yourself what you’re worth, or only when you’ve settled all the bills, if at all?
- Are you exhausted by chasing your tail doing tasks that don’t feed your passion?
- Was the last time you reviewed your business plan more than a month ago?
If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, your plan is the wrong plan and that means you’re building the wrong business
You need a plan that’s agile and flexible, that can help you keep up with a dynamic market place. It should be simple, focused, and ensure you have clear targets and accountability for delivering results – poor planning results in targets being missed and the business drifting. A great plan provides a platform to tweak strategies ensuring targets are hit consistently.
Having a plan isn’t the whole plan
It’s not just about having the right plan, it’s about being willing and able to deliver it. If you feel a bit lost, lonely or in need of a wise man (or woman!) to bounce some ideas off, you should consider investing in a business mentor. Of those businesses with a mentor, a whopping 70% get to the five-year mark – a 28% increase!
Running a business is tough with difficult decisions to be made, and operating in an echo chamber of everyone saying what you want to hear doesn’t help you make you the right choices.
A business mentor can be the listening ear you need to talk something through, the person to keep you accountable to the targets in your business plan, or the expert that helps you avoid the impending crisis you’ve not spotted yet – because you don’t know what you don’t know.
Looking back
We had a fantastic (2016), doubling our client base for dedicated strategy and business mentoring, and delivering peer-mentoring to more than 30 businesses every month through our unique Food4Thought dinners.
We achieved this because we had a great strategy and the right team around us to deliver it. We were set for success. Our plans (for 2017) were refined at an away day in London in December surrounded by other aspirational business leaders and we have bigger plans still this year. Thankfully I have a high calibre team and robust systems that will help me deliver.
What’s your plan?
If you’re still wondering what your plan should look like, or you haven’t even been able to measure how the previous year performed versus target, give us a call to discuss our unique strategy model & tailored business mentoring programs to put yourself in the best position to really accelerate your growth this year.
Do you have a lengthy business plan and never look at it or maybe you have no plan at all? Many business owners don’t manage their company strategically, know what to focus on or measure daily, to have complete clarity and control.
If you would like to manage your business on a single page, access our tool here to get started: tendo-uk.com/plan
