How I Write A 90 Day Action Plan To Hit My Goals

Serial Entrepreneurs? How About A Super-Serial Entrepreneur

I’ve been in business for 16 years, I’ve built six or seven companies now and I’m really passionate about education!

To me, education is what separates failure from success so that’s where I like to put my focus.

Most recently, my new company Bizversity has successfully created an AI business advisor which takes high-level mentorship and makes it available for small business owners.

In order to accomplish all that I do, productivity plays a major role.

Around ten years ago a read a book called “The Rockefeller Habits,” that introduced me to the idea of having a strategic plan.

Often times business plans fail because they haven’t been thought through at a deep level. Similarly, a plan needs to be fluid enough that you can correct course when situations change, and these days they’re changing all the time!

If you make a plan at the beginning of your year by the end you’ll be completely off-track if you haven’t been updating it along the way.

I’ve found 90 days to be a good time frame to chunk your time into. There’s so much that you can accomplish in 90 days if you put your mind to it.

The action plan piece really just comes down to putting it all on a piece of paper. Ideas are worthless unless you implement them!

When you sit down to put your first 90-day plan together you want to have an overall vision in which you’re working towards.

Ask yourself what success looks like to you and what you want your company to look like?

This may sound cliche but this step is crucial to your overall success with this strategy.

This is your long term vision and where you want to end up in let’s say 3 or 5 years. Then you have to work backward back to the here and now.

What are the 5 most important things you can accomplish in your business over the next 90 days that will contribute to this ultimate vision?

I like to limit my lists to 5 items otherwise they tend to grow to include 100s of random tasks that sound nice to me on any given day.

By keeping it to 5 things you stay focused and each item has to earn its way onto the list, ensuring they remain high value.

I used to rebel against this idea, but think of it this way, you only have 5 fingers on your hand and that’s typically the number of items you can hold in your brain at any one time.

Also, would you rather have started 30 projects this quarter and finished none of them or have 5 projects completed and shipped out the door? For me, the latter is the way to go of course.

The power of this plan is in the simplification.
 

Action Steps

1. Have an overall vision for where you want your business to be over the long term (3 or 5 years perhaps.)
2. Work backward to determine the top 5 projects you can complete in 90 days to achieve this vision.
3. Break your 5 projects down into smaller items and spread them out over the 90 days.
4. Check back into your plan daily and weekly to stay on task.

 

Result You Will Achieve

A 90-day action plan that keeps you focused on the big items that’ll move your business forward.
 

 
This article is based on an EHQ interview with the mentor.