How to Plan Your Business Like an Expert

Recently, a member of my Sales Authenticity and Success Mastermind asked me about my planning process. How do I decide what my business priorities will be? What mindset do I employ?

Since fall is the perfect time for you to start planning your own six- or seven-figure business for the coming year, I thought I’d share with you what I told her:

1. Listen, Act, Trust.
This is my mantra, which I practice all year long. To begin your own planning process, start with listening. Lessons and messages are everywhere, so you want to notice what things keep showing up. Do you keep ending up in a certain market segment or with certain partners, or are your clients asking you for certain things? Can you feel your Trusted Source pulling or pushing you in a certain direction over and over? Listen to that and consider if those messages are pointing the way for your business. You know what they say: If you don’t listen to the taps, you could be asking for the 2x4!

2. What would you love to NOT do anymore?
What do you want to let go of in your business? Or, maybe you like everything you do, but you know you can’t keep adding to your plate without taking something off. Therefore, what could you let go of that you could make up the loss of in other ways? For instance, if you decided that JV and affiliate partnerships weren’t a perfect fit for you anymore, you might make up the loss of the leads through doing a telesummit, podcast or Facebook ads.
3. Use the four Irresistible Offer Litmus Test Questions.
And, finally, to create a very solid foundation for a six- or seven-figure business that serves you as well as your clients, apply the same litmus test to your planning process that you used to design your Irresistible Offer.

Those four questions are:
• What is the transformation you want to offer? Even if you’ve had a successful business for years, you’re always evolving and growing, so take the time to look at what's in your heart. What is the transformation you most want to offer and work on now? In many cases it’s a slight upleveling from the year before, which encompasses what you have already built.

• How would you deliver that transformation? Now that you know what transformation you are committed to providing, you can take a look at how you would deliver it. Most people make the mistake of thinking about delivery first. But putting the transformation first is the key to serving more people and making your sales conversion machine a profit- and difference-making machine. So do you want to be doing live speaking and events? Or has your life come to a place where you want to minimize being on the road so you would prefer a more virtual model. Maybe teleseminars and webinars. Or maybe you want a hybrid, like our model. In any case, you want to take two things into account here: your lifestyle and which delivery model best serves the transformation you are working to provide.

• Is it leveraged? There are only so many hours in a day, so to get to the six- or seven-figure level while still leading a balanced life you’re going to love, you need to be working with more than one person at a time. Will the delivery model you chose above allow for that?

• Do I love it? This is key. You want to be doing what you love, standing on your own dime, not fulfilling somebody else’s idea of what you should do. So even if the signs seem to be pointing in a particular direction, if you don’t love it, don’t go there. And this is important for the delivery model you chose too. If you’re tired of being alone behind your computer, maybe it’s time to build in speaking and some live events or workshops.

BONUS: Give yourself some space.
Don't try to plan a big future on a sticky note. Use a wall poster. Get everything off your desk. Give yourself actual, physical space to plan the business and life of your dreams.

If your dream business relies on speaking and sales, there’s no better preparation than our Speak-to-Sell Bootcamp. And that’s why I’m offering you the chance to join me BACKSTAGE next weekend at no cost to you. Take a sneak peek behind the scenes at our live event in Tampa, and learn my secrets for crafting your Signature Talk and Irresistible Offer PLUS I'll also give you a peek at my "7-Figure Work From Home Blueprint."