I’m sure you’ve heard the expression failing to plan is planning to fail. Now I’m all for giving credit where credit is due, so the actual quote by Benjamin Franklin is, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.”
For the LONGEST time, this quote or expression or what have you, drove me nuts. What do you mean if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail. I’m not planning to fail. This is what would go through my head. It was almost offensive.
But over the years I’ve seen firsthand how instrumental planning can actually be. Be it in your life, or your business, and I’ve seen how impactful it has been for my clients, especially as they grow and scale. Which is where we get into the meat and potatoes, if you will, of the biggest overlooked strategy to set yourself up to scale.
Planning.
And more specifically in this context, quarterly planning for your business.
I do want to highlight that it is not enough to just plan. You have to execute as well. It’s fine and dandy if you’re writing all of the amazing things you’re planning to accomplish for the year or quarter ahead. I emphasise planning because a plan without execution won’t ever lead to anything except hyped up talk.
But keeping that in the back of your mind, let’s talk about goal setting and quarterly sprints.
December and January, particularly, are really fun times to look back on the previous year and plan for the year ahead. And you’ll see tons of posts and trainings and content all about how to do a year-end reflection and how to set good goals for the upcoming year. Which is awesome. I absolutely love these and they can be incredibly valuable and help reflect and take what worked well, tweak what didn’t, and really set the tone for the coming year.
But what about the other 10 months of the year? What about February to November? We very rarely see valuable content about how to set your business up for success by planning during those months. And if you think about it, that’s actually more than 83% of the year.
Now there is always something so inspiring and so fresh and so promising about a new year. New goals, new you type of thing. A new slate and a fresh start. But here’s what often happens. We set big, lofty goals, but we get out of sync in a week or two. By February we haven’t come close to keeping up with our goals and then we’ve simply given up hope.
So I really love to share the experiences my clients and have and things that I’ve gone through in my business journey, but oftentimes I find it’s really useful to pull hard data and statistics. So, indulge me a bit as a I share a little bit about studies on goals and resolutions, as shared in an article about Quitter’s Day from Nationaltoday.com.
In 2019, extensive research was conducted by Strava — a social network for athletes — and it was found that approximately 80% of people who made New Year’s resolutions have tapped out by the second week of January. Making deductions from the available 800 million user-logged activities in that year, Strava even went on to predict that the second Friday of January was the fateful day when the motivations of most quitters begin to decline. The main areas of focus for resolutions involve exercise, eating habits, and weight loss.
New studies have found that about two-thirds of people abandon their New Year’s resolution within a month. One of the major problems with achieving new year resolutions is that those who set them are over-ambitious. People usually start with high levels of motivation, but as time progresses, the drive begins to wane. The key in achieving goals is to set short, medium, and long-term goals as opposed to one large unrealistic stretch goal. Starting small and staying consistent, and also pairing up with someone else to remain accountable and motivated, will lead to good results.
Now you absolutely do not need a new year to set achievable goals. And that is one of the biggest – and simplest – overlooked strategies to set yourself – and your business – up to scale. Planning out your quarter.
Some of my most successful clients – I’m talking high multi-6 figure year and 7-figure year clients, actually plan a year in advance. This means they know what they’re offering, they know when they’re launching, they know what is coming up and they have a very clear picture for the entire year. That’s not to say that there isn’t room to pivot and shift as needed, but the strategies and plans are mapped out. This means their big focus can be on making sure their mindset is solid, they’re fully showing up, their energy is in check, and they’re executing. They don’t having to waffle back and forth on what to do when and how, and this really cuts down on decisions needing to be made and decision-fatigue.
Now did they get this way overnight? No, absolutely not. But from what I’ve experienced, there are typically clients who like to really plan everything out, and there are clients who don’t really plan much and go with the flow.
And going with the flow can be totally fine to a point, but it can only take you so far. It’s imperative to be strategic and it’s imperative to have a plan.
So a second ago when I mentioned some of my most successful clients didn’t get this way overnight, they didn’t. They had to work at it. And some of them approached business from a 100% flow state where they weren’t really planning anything, and they made subtle shifts that helped them plan and subsequently, scale.
So if you’re listening to this and you find you typically tend to go with the flow, that’s okay. There are little tweaks you can make that can support you in setting some structure in place to map out some of these quarterly sprints.
Likewise, if you’re a planner, but you find you plan out too much and you end up getting overwhelmed and most of your goals don’t get accomplished, this will help you as well.
We all know that life can get in the way of plans. So we want to make plans that are ambitious but also realistic.
Introducing: quarterly planning.
Quarterly planning is planning out a quarter of the year. Typically these are broken out into Q1, which is January – March. Q2, which is April – June. Q3, which is July – September. And Q4, which is October – December.
They are roughly 90 days, 12 weeks, or 3 months. It’s enough time to get shit done but not so much time that it’s super overwhelming or too long.
This can also be called quarterly sprints because they’re short bursts of time, so it’s like a sprint in the year. You go hard and you go fast and then it’s over as quickly as it started. Quarterly sprints allow you to stay focused on the present. When you are planning these out, you’re usually going to want them to have specific objectives with measurable milestones.
When talking about things I wanted to achieve in a quarter and trying to figure out the priority, my business coach, Lacey Sites, used a phrase that I absolutely love. Quarterly North Stars.
So for some context, launching this podcast had been on the back burner for over a year. But life kept on lifein, as it tends to do, and other things in the business took higher priority.
And then, finally came the time where I had the bandwidth to put this out, commit to it, and actually show up consistently for it. This podcast was launched in Q1, and it became my quarterly North Star.
That meant that my big goal for that quarter, the thing I kept sprinting to, was the podcast. For me, that meant publishing an episode every Monday, no matter what. Not even marketing it. Just getting in the habit of actually recording and publishing the damn thing. And some weeks I literally only recorded on Monday and then published right away. Other weeks I had a bit of a buffer. But no matter what, I showed up and I published an episode every single Monday. And I did.
For some clients, their quarterly North Stars are launching a program and filling a certain number of spots, for others it’s making one new genuine connection every single day, for you, maybe it’s showing up on social media 3 times per week the entire quarter, or filling your 1:1s.
That’s another really cool thing about quarterly sprints or quarterly North Stars. Usually you want to be doing something for at least 3 months minimum to see how it’s going to work, so if you’re trying out a new offer or pivoting something, it’s a really great time to commit to it and truly give it an opportunity to see how it works or how you like it, etc.
At the end of the quarter, you can look back on what happened and evaluate what went well and what didn’t. Then you can always take that data and make adjustments as needed.
Now one more thing about quarterly North Stars. Something that I found really helpful was when I got clear on what my North Star was, it was easier to commit to it, and it was easier to hold myself accountable. So for the podcast, for example, there were times when it would have been SO easy to say I would just do it tomorrow. But really honing in on the fact that this was my big push for that quarter was so motivating and it made it easier for me to show up even when I didn’t want to.
Ideally your quarterly sprints or quarterly North Stars will be a piece in a puzzle that are fitting together into a bigger picture. They don’t have to be, they can be one-off things you’ve been wanting to try or do or achieve, but strategically it is a smart move if it plays into a bigger picture.
But with that said, if you’re feeling overwhelmed about everything going on, all the things you want to do and achieve in your business, and planning things out even for the next 12 months feels really intense, that’s okay. Just focus on breaking things into smaller chunks, specifically into quarters.
And one really beautiful thing about quarters are you don’t have to wait for a new year. Even if we’re in the middle of a quarter right now as you’re listening to this, you can still get clear on what you’d like your next quarterly North Star to be, and already start taking small steps to get there.
If you’re struggling trying to prioritise what you should be tackling next but you’re stuck and there is just too much happening, even with breaking things down into North Stars, pop me a message. We can chat about a couple of simple shifts you can make to take things off of your plate (instead of adding more onto it) that can support and set you up to scale.
Thank you again so much for tuning in, I appreciate you being here. I would absolutely love to hear what quarterly North Star you land on and thank you again for being here. Have a great week ahead and I’ll see you next Monday!
