When you start a new business you need a plan in place before you begin building it.
In this article, I will document the planning I went through in the early stages of setting up my online business.
If you want to be successful then you need structure to your business. Your early planning should define that and document that structure. It is important everything documented so you can refer to it as you progress.
I will detail the documents I put in place and the philosophy behind my business preparation.
My Planning Documents
My target is to go from broke to full-time income in 12 months. I have set myself a goal of earning $3000 per month by October 2021.
Although I had formulated the business idea in my head beforehand, I began working on my business in earnest on 14th September 2020.
I did have some parts of my business already in place, such as a WordPress website and a Facebook page. These were from a venture I had in around 2014 and had little value for my new venture. The time I saved in setting them up would be offset by the time needed to alter and rebrand them.
To achieve my business goal I need to plan and build the online business structure by the end of September 2020. This gave me around 17 days to complete this task.
My long term plans for the business are quite ambitious. So, it was important that my planning was accurate from the beginning.
The task of planning and building the online business in 17 days would be no mean feat to achieve.
To launch my online business I need planning documentation written beforehand. Here is a list of what I see as essentials:
- a business plan
- a project plan
- a marketing plan
- a social media posting calendar
- a blog post calendar
- a decent diary/journal
Take my word for it, you need these to be successful. You also need these BEFORE you launch your business. If not, you will never find the time to create them.
Once you have them created it is much easier to keep them updated, especially if you create templates. Getting into the habit of reviewing these documents on a regular basis is also essential.
If you don’t have these documents in place before you start you will fail. These are the maps and charts for your journey. Without them, you will end up getting lost.
By producing these you are stating the following:
- your destination
- the route you will take
- the method of transportation
- the cost of getting there
I hope you can follow my analogy 😉
I am setting off on my journey. It is a financial journey. I am starting at broke and travelling to a full-time income.
My journey will take 12 months. I have target destinations along the way (goals I have set). I will use various methods to reach my destination and I have a good idea of how much it will cost.
If I didn’t have these in place it begs all sorts of questions along the way:
- Where am I aiming to be?
- How am I going to get there?
- What route will I take?
- How much will it cost to get there?
- How will I know I have arrived?
Starting a business is starting a journey and you need to plan a journey if you want it to be successful.
My Business Plan
I use a method called ‘Lean Methodology’ to produce a simple 1-page business plan, called a ‘Lean Canvas’.
I have used this method for a few years now and it is a great way to put your business thoughts down on paper.
My plan took only 20 minutes to produce, which is a good sign. It means my plan was already well formulated in my head. Using the Lean Methodology was an easy way to transfer those thoughts onto paper.
Here is my Lean Canvas for ‘Terry Jenkins Online’:
I love this type of business plan because it is simple to understand. It is also all laid out on a single sheet of paper. This means I can refer to it on a regular basis without overwhelm or using large chunks of my time.
My business plan defines my journey. Not only the destination but the route and the method of transport.
You can sign up for a free account by visiting this link to leanstack.com.
If you have a business idea, this is a quick and easy way of discovering how well-formed your idea is. Plus, you get the added bonus of producing your one-page business plan.
My Project Plan
Project planning is essential no matter what size business you are.
It is so easy to miss an important step in your project if you don’t have the steps written down.
A project planning tool will help control those steps, set target dates, and make notes as you implement them.
I use Yanado as my project planner because I have a lifetime paid account. Alternatives are Trello or Asana, which also offer free accounts.
This is a screenshot of my Yanado project plan:
On the left in the black area are my sub-projects. I use this to keep related tasks together. As you can see by the numbers to the right of the sub-project, I have several hundred tasks to complete my set up.
Some of the sub-projects are one-off projects such as ‘Tools Set Up’. Once completed I will archive the sub-project as the tasks within it are all one-off tasks.
Other sub-projects are on-going, such as ‘Content’. The tasks in this project will come and go, but I am unlikely to ever complete all content for my project. New subjects will always be available to write about.
I keep task management within my project plan pretty simple as follows:
1) Pending
These are tasks I have identified to do in my business but have not yet allocated time to. Unless there is a specific deadline for a particular task I do not set a due date for them.
2) Doing
Every Monday morning I plan the week ahead. The tasks I intend to complete over the following 7 days I move from ‘Pending’ to Doing’.
I also set a due date for these tasks so I will get reminders if I fail to complete them in time.
3) Done
These are the tasks I have completed. I tend to archive many of these tasks at the beginning of the week if I don’t need to refer to them again.
I find this method of planning my weekly tasks is a brilliant aid in keeping my business on track. Plus there is something satisfying when you move tasks into the ‘Done’ column.
My Marketing Plan
I use a tool for this too. I attended a training course run by Mostafa Hosseini called ‘Simple Marketing Formula’. During this training, you produce your 2-page marketing plan.
This live training runs across 6 days for around 2 to 3 hours per day. I found the training invaluable.
Within the course you accomplish the following for your business:
- Set your business goals
- Define your target market
- Create your irresistible offer
- Design your lead generation strategy
- Craft your lead conversion process
- Define your client retention activities
This 6-day training was one of the best I have undertaken. It helps with focussing your mind on your business. It also helps you define your prospective clients and your marketing strategy.
Here is a link to register for the course:
https://approved.terry-jenkins.com/GZE
My Social Media Planning Calendar
At the time of writing, this was still on my project plan as ‘Pending’ (see above). I have it scheduled to complete towards the end of this month (September 2020). I will produce a blog post on its creation, so look out for that in a couple of weeks.
The idea behind having a social media calendar is to define a structure to the content you release on your social platforms. I have tools that control the scheduling of social media posts to achieve this.
I create my social media planner at the same time as my blog post planner. Both cover 90 days – the next quarter.
By planning both at the same time I ensure the schedule for my social accounts supports the blog content I release.
My blog post calendar
You need to read this in conjunction with the Social Media Planner above.
My intention is to plan out 90 days worth of content at a time. This means I only have to do this 4 times a year.
My intention is to have clumps of content that support one area of my business. Planning 3 months’ worth of blog posts at a time makes it much easier to control this.
I plan to create my first 90-day content plan towards the end of this month (September 2020) in conjunction with my 90-day Social Media Content Plan.
My Diary/Journal
This is essential/invaluable/mandatory.
I have an A4 size day-to-a-page diary that I use as my diary/journal.
I make sure it is one that has separate pages for Saturday and Sunday as I tend to do work over the weekend. Most diaries of this size tend to clump the weekend onto one page. If you plan to work weekends you will find this restrictive.
I use my diary not only for notes but as a journal for my business ideas. I find writing things down tends to get them out of my head so I can move on to more pressing matters.
I also use Notion as an electronic journal and filing cabinet. I used to use Evernote, but find Notion suits my style of work better.
I find Notion invaluable. I install it on all my devices (computer, laptop, phone, tablet) as it synchronises my notes across them.
So when I want to watch a webinar on my laptop, but the link is on my desktop, I drop it into Notion. Within seconds I have the link on my laptop in a Notion note.
I also use Notion to store PDFs, training course URLs, online tools URLs, swipe files, email sequences, etc. The list is pretty endless.
I find storing URLs for training and tools I use in my business a great way of remembering stuff you have purchased but forgotten about.
See my upcoming blog post on the tools I use in my business to see how I used Notion to find some tools I purchased years ago.
My Business Start-Up Plan
In my head, I had an idea of what I needed to do to get my business in a state I could launch it. I wanted to make sure I started with as much momentum as I could.
I came up with a list of the main areas I needed to tackle:
- Website build and branding
- Social media accounts set up
- Blogging accounts set up
- Content distribution to all the above
- Tools I would need to run the business
- Training courses I would follow
- How to monetise my business
- Written plans I needed to produce
- Online properties needed
- Branding
Armed with this list I populated my project plan in Yanado. I also devised a list of blog posts I needed to chart this preparation stage of my business.
This blog post is one of those articles. You can see the original plan in the mind map below:
Using this methodical approach gave me the skeleton I needed to build my business. Undertaking the tasks identified in the plan put the meat and skin on that skeleton.
My aim was to use the 3 weeks I had in September to devise this plan, put it into action, and complete it.
Now, this is a tall order. There is a lot of work involved to complete this in a short span of time. More so, as I still have my caring duties for my partner Andie.
Some of this work I had undertaken before on other projects, but some of it was new to me. As much of this work was technical in nature, I had no idea what difficulties I would encounter along the way. I also had no idea how long it would take to overcome these problems.
Implementing the plan involved a lot of work. Here is a list (in no particular order) that is not exhaustive by any means:
- Setting up hosting for my website (I wanted to use a better hosting company)
- Setting up email addresses
- Choosing tools to produce content in various forms (blog posts, video, audio, ebooks, etc)
- Choosing tools to distribute content
- Choosing training (old and new) so I had the knowledge to undertake the plan and achieve my goals
- Sorting through the online tools I owned and choosing what I could use for this business
- Picking new tools that filled in the gaps from the previous bullet point
- Designing and building a website
- Planning documents (see above)
- Devising how I would monetise my business
- Designing the flow of content to my branded properties on the web, including social media websites
- Set up of 15 social media and blogging platforms
- Setting up of 4 or 5 social and blogging posting tools
- Writing 15 blog posts charting how I planned and built everything in this preparation stage (this is blog post #2)
- Most of these steps are like bricks in a wall. What you see is most of the bricks I needed to assemble to get my business ready for launch.
What you don’t see are all the things I had to do to hold these bricks together (the mortar). The remaining blog posts covering this preparation phase should do that.
Will I be ready?
As you can see there is a pretty long list of tasks I need to complete to be ready in a 17 day period.
Some of these tasks are already complete as I write this. I will be producing the blog posts covering those tasks in the coming days.
1 or 2 areas have been troublesome and are still not complete. More on that in upcoming blog posts.
As I write this, I am 5 days in and have achieved quite a lot, but the remaining list of tasks is still daunting.
I am prioritising the tasks as I go. My intention is to have the absolute least needed to launch completed first. Then I can go live in October irrespective of the preparation tasks still to complete.
I hope you can join me during this whirlwind business creation period and then beyond as I build my business.
If you haven’t read my first article on the ideas and plan behind my business journey, there is a link below to it so you can read it now.
Assuming it exists by the time you read this, there is also a link to the next article in this series below too.
Until next time . . .