This blog post was first published on 14 November 2020

I'm not your typical entrepreneur. I don't wait until I know everything and make everything perfect before I start. I research as much as I can, take the knowledge I have and then give things a go. I honestly think that's one of the reasons my business has been so successful. You can very quickly see where you can do better once you've done something once. You then have a framework and a process to improve from.

Does this mean I find being a business owner easy. In a word, no! There are lots of things which take me a while to understand. Take 90 day planning as an example, this has only just clicked for me and I'll share how in a moment but until about a month ago I just didn't get it.

DO YOU MAKE A 90 DAY BUSINESS PLAN?

I'd often heard people recommend sitting down and making a 90 day plan, some people block off a whole day for it. What on earth are they possibly doing all day I would wonder?! The idea of a 90 day plan is that at the start of a quarter you plan the quarter ahead. My plan always looked the same.

Aim: Empower female entrepreneurs by giving them confidence to sell their products and services online by providing them with knowledge, understanding and legal templates.

There is also a part of the plan where you had to put down a figure of how much you wanted to make. I always put £5,000 for each month but I didn't really know why, it just seemed a good figure. I had my legal template shop all ready and set up and then I waited. Guess what, some days people purchased and other times they didn't. I was active online, sometimes people would love my Instagram posts and share them but it felt very much like I didn't really have a plan and that I was very reliant on waiting for people to invest. The business grew and whilst the revenue was okay, it was never consistent.

I just couldn't get my head around how I could project my sales. That was until I sat down and decided I was going to break a huge financial goal in my business, one bigger than I had ever set before.

I thought about the questions I often got asked, "How do you get a trade mark, can you help me?" Perfect I thought. I'll create a super simple 5 day mini course with daily videos of about 10 minutes long and teach people how to file for a trade mark. I called the mini course File In Five. I tested the idea with my audience, pre-sold a few spots, launched, told people there was a deadline to join and people booked their spots, as simple as that. At the same time I launched another course and a bespoke template bundle. All of the products and services had deadlines to purchase either before a course started or before the price went up.

Finally, it had clicked.

I had the key to creating consistent income.

It isn't possible to create a hugely successful business by simply creating something amazing like my legal templates and then waiting. You have to have a strategy for each quarter to bring people in either by creating something new which people can decide whether they are either in or out on purchasing or by putting out some sort of offer or discount.

In the end, I launched everything I had on my 90 day plan that month!! I absolutely obliterated my huge goal. Yes, the big one which was bigger than I had ever set before, and I remember sitting at my desk as the Stripe notifications went off, absolutely in shock as I finally felt all of the pieces come together and realised that despite researching how to do these things, no-one had ever explained how it worked before.

Now I'm not sure I would recommend doing 90 days' work in 31 days but I finally feel like I understand the process now. Perhaps you knew about this all along, but I thought I would share because I honestly feel like a huge weight has been lifted.
Would love to know your thoughts on this and if you already had this figured out? Do you ever create a 90 day plan?

Do you create one because you feel you should or is it actually strategic with a clear plan on how the desired outcomes will become a reality?

I did a mini You Tube training on this click here to find out more! 

Lucy x