If ever there was a year that we need to bounce back from and find some focus, 2020 has turned out to be it. Like so many people, your pals here at One Man Brand had hoped to have some clear-sighted 20/20 vision on the year (yes, pun intended) and had a good handle on things for the first couple of months.
But of course the Covid-19 pandemic had other ideas for all of us. We’ve all been beset by challenges and uncertainties that we never could have dreamed of a year ago. And while it may seem all too difficult and futile to think too far ahead right now it’s still worthwhile to look to some trusted business planning principles as we move into the second year of our most stressful year ever.
Here’s three that we love.
Find your treasure map. A good map gives you the big X to travel toward and it can be a sales goal, hiring metrics or whatever matters most to your company. The dotted line that stretches between the small X of your current location and the big X of where you want to be is represented by your marketing budget. Here’s where we quote our old friend the Cheshire cat: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” That in mind, now’s the time to ask yourself what does Dec. 31 of 2020 look like?
Live by SMART goals. Here at One Man Brand and The Brand Guys we grind with clients the most on this because it’s easy to make goals that are just lots of platitudes. Instead they need to look at the SMART Goals framework and formulate goals that are: Specific, Measurable and clearly defined, Attainable with your available resources, Relevant to your company’s mission, and Time-based so you’ve got a deadline to make things happen.
Get granular. This comes when you work on the systems and infrastructure needed to make your business reach its full potential. So many businesses fail when they’re not procedure focused and live or die by kind of making things up as they go. The hard question here is, how do we build the system and processes to run the business? Get it figured out, get it in writing and memorialize what you’ve decided is most important for the daily operation of the company. After all, when we ask employees to remember to do the right thing and stand tall with not infrastructure behind then we set ourselves up to fail.