Creating 1st Quarter 2020 Plan

Hello, and welcome to episode 19 of The Strategy Corner, where our goal is to get you to take action. I’m your host, Michelle Zink, the owner of Intentional Solutions Corp. Today’s strategy is creating your first quarter 2020 plan. Yes, we’re finally bringing it all together today. I know. I’m so excited for you and I’m so excited that you are creating your first 2020 plan for the quarter. Now you might be asking, why are we doing a quarter? Well, I’m utilizing all of the knowledge that I’ve learned also with EOS when I talk with you guys. And EOS, just a reminder, is the Entrepreneur Operating System. It’s a system that I implement with clients, and I’m taking a little bit from them and using their recommendation of focusing on one quarter at a time, and what that does is it creates constraint.

When we look at the full year and we look at everything that we want to grow and develop, you think, well I need to know specifically what I’m doing the whole year. But if we really looked at and slowed down a little bit and thought about it, you can’t know what the whole year is going to be like. For example, when I have my one thing about growing my business and getting the double revenue I’m looking for, I could start the year off thinking that I want to build these particular centers of influence. I want to learn or maybe join these organizations, and based off of all of that in the second quarter we can go in a totally different direction. Maybe I join organizations, maybe I create centers of influence, and realize that’s not the direction I want to go.

So by creating a first quarter plan and vision and goals helps you be nimble and helps you to realize that even though you have your one thing that you’re striving for, the way you get there isn’t a straight line, but a zigzag. And I’m sure most of you have heard of that, right? You want to create one thing and then the way you get there, the way you vision, is another way. And then at the end, when you look back at December 31st, 2020, and you look back at the whole year, you can see how it wasn’t a straight line and the way that you thought you’re going to create your one thing was just an idea. And when you actually got there, it happened a totally different way.

And I’m speaking from experience. I know that in the past, and I know in life you want to do something and you think it’s going to be done a certain way, but maybe you’ll get to the same result and that’s the goal, right? Get to the same result, but then being open to how you get there. So that’s why I love this whole theory about planning your first quarter and then kind of letting it sit there on the shelf while you move through your day to day actions, but knowing that that’s your plan, but it can change as well. So being flexible, being nimble, and getting to where you want to go in the end.

So like I said, we’re going to go ahead and start with the first quarter. We’re going to go ahead and streamline the process, so you can utilize it in your life for your business and personal growth. So you could be someone who has one thing and maybe you decided to create one thing for your business and one thing for your personal. You can go ahead and utilize the one sheeter that I’ve created, that you can actually go ahead and download after you listen to this podcast, but that you can utilize that for your one thing for business and personal. Or if you’ve done like me and really have just focused on the one thing for business, knowing that my personal will improve based off of that one thing, then you’d only fill out this one form that I provided one time. So it’s really how you want to handle it.

To refresh your memory of what you want to actually create in 2020, so this is where we begin today’s lesson. You need to go back and reread everything you’ve put together in the month of December. If you answered one question or 30 questions, I can’t even remember how many I put together in total, but you need to go back and just get refreshed, refreshed, excuse me, of what you actually put together so that you can come to the table and fill out this one sheet form rather quickly because you know exactly where you want to go. Okay, so let me just remind you again what you need to do first. You need to go back and read everything that you’ve put together in the month of December, all of your downloads, all of your journaling, all of your writing. You can print off all of your documents that you’ve created if you actually typed them up, or you can just go back and read what you put down. But the thing is, in order to get this completed in a timely manner, you need to go ahead and reread everything. And then this document being filled out is just something that comes to you quickly.

Okay, so let’s jump in and talk about what this one sheet includes. So again, I have created this. It’s very simple, and so at the top you’ll see it says one year plan, and for your one year plan you need to write down your one thing. So just fill in whatever your one thing is. For me, it was growing my business. And then you want to fill in the word of the year. That’s only if you want to create one. I didn’t talk about creating a word of the year in the past episodes, but I’m going to talk about it real quickly here. So every year I think of something or I think about what I actually want to be and create in 2020, so my one thing, growing my business, I thought through, what’s a word that really aligns with growing my business? And when I did some analysis, when I say analysis, I really just thought about it. I just thought like, what would be a good word? And that’s all you need to do. Sit down. Okay, if I chose one word for 2020, what would it be?

And in past years I’ve actually started off with one word and then changed it. So it doesn’t have to be something that you stick to for your whole year. You just need to choose a word, and it’s really just when you’re feeling, it’s really just to be utilized as motivation. So when you have those days where you’re just out of whack, you don’t know where you’re going, you feel unfocused, you go back to your one thing and you go back to your word of the year and you get refocused. So for mine, for me, my one word of the year is being, and I shared in my last podcast that being is really important to me this year. I’ve been a lot of doing over the last three years, creating a business, doing, doing, doing. And this year I want to step into the world of being. So for me, the word of the year is being.

Then underneath that, you list your goals for the year. So based off of your one thing, and for me it’s growing my business, and then based off the word of the year, which is being, what are my goals for the year? So these are the big picture goals. So for me, the goals for the year would be doubling my revenue. For me, the goals for the year would be creating five centers of influence. So really thinking about like could I do that? And again, I’m setting this now, but that could change. But this is what I’m saying my goal for the year would be, to do that. I also had on here creating three speaking engagements. So knowing if I’m going to go ahead and double my revenue, I need to get out there. I need to go out there and meet people who align with me and what my business has to offer and how I can serve. So I can see where in one year I would have three speaking engagements lined up and have been completed throughout the year.

So those are the just the couple of things that I wanted to share on this podcast. But I have about six written down, and you can have as many as you want. You could have one. It could be as simple as just saying my goal for the year is to double my income and that’s it. Or it could be other things, as well. So it’s really just looking at for the whole year, what are your goals for the year, and how can that help you get to your one thing? So it’s bigger picture. Don’t specifically state how you’re going to do it each quarter, just like a bigger picture vision of what your goals for the year would be.

And then, you’ll see underneath that we get into our first quarter goals. So in EOS we call these rocks, but we’re going to go ahead and call these goals, because that’s what people in the outside world utilize. And so we have our first quarter goals and you’ll see there, we put our future date on there. So write down, I have down March 31st, 2020, so we know that these goals are to be completed by March 31st, 2020, and then we have our goals for the quarter. So here’s where we go ahead and say, okay, in a year I have my one thing, I have my word, I’ve got the big picture goals that I want to accomplish, right? But specifically this quarter, what are things that I want to do? What are actions I want to take to move me towards my one thing and goals for the year?

So this is where you have specific things, and you only want to have five to seven at the most, because these are things that you’re going to be doing in addition to your day to day activities. So for me, it would be meeting and cultivating two centers of influence in the first quarter. And it might just be one actually, but I put two down. I’m thinking that sometimes it takes a long time to cultivate. So strategically looking at and creating two centers of influence. And I’ve also gotten a little bit more specific and stated where I wanted to create those centers of influence.

So on your goal that you set for the quarter, you could specifically say, let’s say your one thing is losing 30 pounds. So your goal for the quarter could be to lose possibly a pound a week. Your goal could be to lose maybe five pounds in three months. It all depends how you’re going about losing the weight. Sometimes you want to go slower, so that you keep it off for a while. Sometimes you want to go quicker. So really determining a goal for the quarter that would be realistic. That could also be, if you’re looking at losing weight, one of your goals for the quarter could be to eat eight ounces of vegetables a day. So if you’re going to be balancing out your food, you could possibly get really specific on a goal that aligns with losing weight and what particular foods you want to start enjoying and putting in your diet. You could also add, if you’re trying to lose weight, an exercise protocol that you want to incorporate in the first quarter.

So at the end of December 31st, maybe your goal is to have two to three times, or maybe your goal would be three times, we want to be pretty specific in these, because the more specific, the better. So let’s say you have a regiment that you’re going to the gym three times a week. So that could easily be obtained, and you could be working towards that. So in January you might only be going one time and then you work up to two times in February, and then March you could work up to three times. That’s just an example. But the more specific you get, the more likely you will achieve it. So getting very, very specific, so that’s going to help you to actually create and move towards your one thing.

So I’m just going to review that again, and add in any more learnings that I’m thinking of as I go along. But you need to go, and number one, read over the things that you’ve created throughout the month. Number two, fill out the one sheeter that I provided, and that is filling out your one thing. So writing down your one thing that you landed on, and if you didn’t land on one thing, you can always just put like an overarching idea, or two to three things, and then throughout the year you can start narrowing in and figuring out which one specifically it is. So if you didn’t come up with one particular one, like I didn’t last year, where I’ve had troubles in the past, where I’ve had a couple of things I was working on, just write them all down so at least you know where you’re going. And then if you’d like to develop a word of the year, fill that in.

And then again, the word of the year is for inspiration. So whatever word, just go with whatever word comes up, give yourself like 10 minutes and just ask yourself, what word would really serve me this year? And then your goals for the year, so again, these are the big goals. What are some things that you’d really need to happen throughout the year in order to establish and get to that one thing? And then we break it down to the first quarter. So we have the future date of March 31st, and we decide on the three to the seven at the most goals for the quarter, that again, align with your one thing. And the more specific you are, the more realistic, that’s another thing, you need to be realistic, right? So if you have a goal of losing 30 pounds, you can’t say that you’re going to lose 20 pounds in the first quarter. That’s most likely pretty unrealistic. So you really want to make sure you’re realistic, you want to make sure they’re specific, you want to make sure it has a specific thing that you’re getting to.

So you’ll know when we go back and review your list for the quarter in April, you’ll know if you actually accomplished it or not. So that’s the key. And that’s it. So I’m keeping it really simple this podcast. All you need to do is, again, the actions are to go and reread what you put together for December, and then fill out this one sheeter, and then finally print it out and keep it on your desk. Why do you do this? So that it’s always top of mind and you’re always reminding yourself where you want to go, so that you can actually achieve and cultivate and create the 2020 you’ve been dreaming about.

Okay, until next time, please go to iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, and subscribe to The Strategy Corner. Also, go to my website, intentionalsolutionscorp.com and sign up to get my weekly blog post, which also has a link to the latest podcast. Remember, planning is key, so take your time, have fun, and download my one sheeter and create your first quarter 2020 vision. Until next time, remember, through action and growth progression happens. Let’s take action together. Thank you, and create an amazing week.